This week: ANU to repay staff, university provost appointed and actions to repair landscapes outlined

In depth: Research and industry groups have expressed hope that a review of Australia’s research system will bring increased investment in R&D.

Full story: Early positions taken on overhaul of Australian research system

Also this week from Research Professional News

Cabinet reshuffle takes place at ‘crucial time for education’—New Australian ministers appointed for immigration, jobs and skills

Here is the rest of the Australia news this week…

Australian National University to repay staff

The Australian National University has said it has taken “immediate and comprehensive action” to repay its A$2 million in underpayments to 2,290 staff. On 25 July the university said it had “self-reported the missed payments to the Fair Work Ombudsman and has undertaken an extensive investigation of the issue spanning 11 years”. The median amount to be repaid per staff member is A$600. ANU vice chancellor Genevieve Bell apologised for the error. 

University of Queensland gets new provost

Mark Blows has been appointed as the new provost of the University of Queensland. In a 24 July announcement, the university said he would take over the role from Aidan Byrne in October. Blows is currently deputy vice-chancellor for research at UQ, and has been at the university for 25 years. Vice-chancellor Deborah Terry said that Blows had already “established an admirable track-record of leading teams to implement initiatives that support the teaching and research functions of the university”.

Call for action on repairing landscapes

A new report from the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists says Australia needs to take “practical actions” to repair degraded landscapes. The 24 July report calls for an evidence-based response over the next 30 years, focusing on five key areas: soils, inland waters, native vegetation, threatened species and coastal environments. The group, which is a not-for-profit organisation of “scientists, economists and business people” has included costings for action in the report.

Humanities researchers travel the world

The Australian Academy of the Humanities has announced the 10 winners of its 2024 Travelling Fellowships scheme for early career researchers. The writers, named on 24 July, include a Flinders University researcher who will go to the United Kingdom to study medieval manuscripts, an RMIT researcher who will compare Australian Indigenous literary culture with that in other places, and a Deakin University scholar who will go to Washington, DC and New York to gain access to the unpublished papers of philosopher Hannah Arendt.

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New Australian ministers appointed for immigration, jobs and skills

Australia’s prime minister Anthony Albanese has reset his Department of Home Affairs with a cabinet reshuffle ahead of the forthcoming election. On 28 July, new ministers were appointed to three departments, with implications for universities.

Tony Burke has been appointed minister for immigration, overseeing student visas and post-work rights, replacing Andrew Giles, who has been moved to the skills and training portfolio.

The proposed caps to international student levels going through Parliament were formally proposed by the minister for education. The government supported the policy to deal with concerns about the effect of international student numbers on the cost of housing.

Burke has also become the minister for home affairs, replacing Clare O’Neil, making him responsible for security issues. 

Long-term politician Brendan O’Connor was moved out of skills and training after announcing his retirement.

Universities Australia said O’Connor had “played an important role in driving key reforms to grow and unify our tertiary education system through the Australian Universities Accord process”.

UA chief executive Luke Sheehy said Giles’s appointment came “at a crucial time of reform for Australia’s tertiary education system”.

“Universities look forward to working with minister Giles to increase participation in tertiary education.”

The Group of Eight praised outgoing minister O’Connor’s work, saying he had “made an extraordinary contribution to public life”.

“He has worked collaboratively across the entire post-secondary sector, with universities and VET providers, to deliver effective policy outcomes for Australia’s future,” the group, which represents the eight largest research universities in Australia, said in a statement. 

The Australian Resources and Energy Employment Association also thanked O’Connor. 

O’Connor recently helped launch the association’s report on a skills shortage in the maritime sector, which called for greater focus on science and technology training.

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New Zealand research consortiums release information on favourable financial statuses

Four of New Zealand’s 10 Centres of Excellence have reported surpluses for 2023.

Not all reports for the centres, which operate as consortiums of interest across the country, have been made available yet, but some of the more prominent ones have said they are doing well.

The MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology reported increased total income in 2023 of NZ$9.29 million compared with 2022’s NZ$8.56m, due to a surplus from the previous year, while government funding remained stable. It increased its spending on salaries by NZ$700,000 and returned a 2023 surplus of NZ$931,000.

The report said MacDiarmid had been focused on “the need for scale-up support for startup companies as they outgrow their university origins”. Deep technology was a “sector of critical importance to Aotearoa New Zealand’s economic and sustainability ambitions”, it said.

MacDiarmid’s report said two new companies had been spun out in 2023, and that existing spin-offs were employing nearly 90 people. 

‘A clear vision’

Te Hiranga Rū QuakeCore’s 2023 report revealed a surplus of NZ$8,000.

It said it had created a new early researchers’ network in 2023, and its researchers contributed to 101 peer-reviewed publications and 38 conference proceedings.

Santiago Pujol has been appointed director of Te Hiranga Rū QuakeCore. A professor of civil engineering at the University of Canterbury, Pujol will take over the role on 1 January 2025, according to a 12 July announcement. 

“Santiago has a clear vision for his leadership of Te Hiranga Rū QuakeCore as it heads into the next level of maturity, and we were very impressed with his ideas and energy.  I think Santiago is well positioned to build on Brendon’s excellent accomplishments as director,” QuakeCore’s board chair, Mike Mendonça, said.

‘Land management decision-making’

The report from Bioprotection Aotearoa emphasised its efforts to “train our researchers to be culturally cognisant and ethical in their work”. It said there was increasing demand for “research to support land management decision-making”.

Bioprotection Aotearoa, which takes in 11 partner organisations, worked with 18 principal investigators, 16 associate investigators,12 postdoctoral fellows and 31 research students during the year. 

It spent NZ$4.052m for the year, with an increased surplus of $NZ1.314 million compared with 2022’s NZ$1.066m. 

‘We are in an excellent position’

Charlotte Walshe, chair of the governance board for the Dodd-Walls Centre, is quoted in the report as saying 2023 had been the centre’s “greatest year of change, refocusing and energising since its inception eight years ago”. 

According to new director Frédérique Vanholsbeeck, Dodd-Walls Centre is involved in producing a forthcoming “report that will constitute an excellent tool to leverage additional funding for photonics and quantum technologies in Australia and New Zealand”. 

“We are in an excellent position to finalise the 2025 midterm review and work on a strong research programme,”  wrote Walshe.

Dodd-Walls’ financial statements show it had income of NZ$6.72m in 2023, well over the projected NZ$4.9m. This meant it returned a surplus of NZ$384,445 for the year instead of the expected deficit.

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Early positions taken on overhaul of Australian research system

Research and industry groups have expressed hope that a review of Australia’s research system will bring increased investment in R&D.

A senior public servant has recently been named to run the review, but little else has been confirmed since the government used its 14 May budget to announce what it is calling a “strategic examination” of the research system. 

Jane O’Dwyer, chief executive of Cooperative Research Australia, said she believes the national cooperative research centre (CRC) programme will survive any changes that flow from the review. 

“I’m confident the programme is safe because it’s so high quality,” she told Research Professional News. Cooperative Research Australia represents all the current cooperative research centres.

O’Dwyer said A$900 million had put aside in the nation’s four-year forward estimates for new CRCs. 

In 2023 only two new CRCs were funded—“we’d love to see more”, she said.

Role for education maven

Former education department public servant Dom English has been appointed to head the secretariat of the “examination”, which is being housed in the Department of Industry, Science and Resources.

Until the end of June, English was the Department of Education’s first assistant secretary for higher education and research. That role is now held by Anthony Millgate, a department official with a background in research commercialisation. English’s appointment was posted on a government directory on 8 July.

But few details of the review have been released. The industry department confirmed that arrangements to appoint an expert panel and give terms of reference were under consideration. The review is expected to take around 18 months.

Millgate will also join the national advisory group on research infrastructure.

Three per cent bid

On 22 July, the Group of Eight, representing Australia’s major research universities, released a “roadmap” to Australia spending 3 per cent of gross domestic product on R&D. 

It called for a deadline of 2035 and a national approach to involve all sectors in meeting the target. The roadmap calls for a number of changes, including new incentives for small-to-medium businesses to work with research organisations and expedited permanent residency deals for international students who gain an Australian PhD.

The roadmap also calls for priority funding for training of science, technology, engineering and mathematics students, improvements to intellectual property practices and “aggregators” to help Australia’s cashed-up superannuation funds invest in research and development. 

It also repeats Group of Eight calls for Australia to pursue greater participation in Horizon Europe and other international funding schemes. 

O’Dwyer said Cooperative Research Australia also supports the 3 per cent target, which is widely nominated as the right target for Australia.

She said the cooperative research centre model could be expanded to other schemes involving non-government entities, to leverage businesses, universities and independent research organisations currently taking part in cooperative research centres, with a requirement of a substantial cash commitment, as well as in-kind assistance before a bid has a chance of gaining federal funding. 

“Our interest is in what unlocks private sector R&D in our system. The CRC programme is our best example of that. The return on investment is huge,” said O’Dwyer.

“We probably are going to have to increase our Commonwealth investment a bit…but the Commonwealth knows that if it invests in this model, the bang for its buck is a well-known and quantified number, and it means they know how much it accelerates us towards that 3 per cent.

“The model you have in the CRC programme—there is no reason why you wouldn’t adopt and apply that model in portfolios where there’s important national needs…in climate change, in agricultural, even in social services,” said O’Dwyer.

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How the Australian Sports Commission is driving a sports research revolution

The days of the Olympics accepting only “amateur” sportspeople are long gone. The average Australian Olympian has behind them sponsorship deals and years of paid training, often at the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) or a top-level club.

But their secret sauce is research: evidence-based dietary advice, tailored daily regimes and high-tech equipment. Think the “shiny suits” that helped the 2004 cohort of Olympic swimmers set records that are yet to be passed now that the suits are banned.

The Australian Sports Commission (ASC), which has been running, in various forms, since 1981, is charged with developing all levels of Australian sport. While the public focus, especially during the Olympics and Paralympics, is on the AIS, the commission also fosters sport in the community, and has an internal and grants-based research programme and, since 2021, a chief science officer.

That officer, Paolo Menaspà, has set about overhauling the priorities of the research programme. He told Research Professional News that there was an appetite among athletes and coaches for evidence-driven improvements.

“I think it’s driven by a genuine interest in being faster, stronger, more skilful or whatever it takes to excel in their sport,” he says. “Many athletes and coaches actually follow scientists on social media and they want to know about the latest research.”

Research agenda

The ASC has met with industry stakeholders––researchers, coaches, government officials and, of course, athletes––to develop a formal research agenda.

The agenda, launched in 2022, is being guided by a national advisory group on sports research, with 33 members. Together, the agenda and advisory group cover more than the ASC’s work; they aim to guide all Australian researchers working on sports-related projects.

The agenda lists five priorities, only one of which is high-performance sport, where Olympians, Paralympians and national teams sit. The others are: participation in sport; the value and benefits of sport; the impact and legacy of major events; and sport system sustainability.

Menaspà notes: “The amount of sports-related research that we support or fund is only a small part of the research happening in Australia. There is amazing research happening independently from the AIS and ASC.” He also cites the influencing power of funding programmes.

Outside research

In 2024, the ASC, through the AIS, offered A$400,000 in funding for outside research projects. While those grants are still being decided, the most recent round of the programme has funded a Deakin University study of injury recovery, a University of Technology Sydney study of ways to decide when injured athletes should return to sport, and other recovery-related research at Edith Cowan University and La Trobe University.

In 2022, the ASC updated guidelines for research it funds to reflect research best practice.

“I’m very conscious of research waste and not wasting taxpayers’ money,” Menaspà says. “Sometimes research waste comes from addressing questions that may not be a priority of the beneficiaries, so when I started, the very first thing I [had done was engage] widely with our stakeholders… particularly athletes and coaches.”

He wanted to see sports research move, as health research has, towards more attention to end-user needs, such as the holistic development of athletes.

“In that case the identified gap was research that considers the athlete as a whole,” he says. “There is a lot of research focused on specific areas, whether it is mental health or physical health.”

Lifting their game

In 2022, the ASC published a report that suggested there was room to work on greater integrity in Australian sports research, and more open-access publication.

It said that although “questionable practices” had not specifically been found in sports research: “It is unlikely that sports research is immune to this problem,” noting that “an increasing number of studies in the area of sports science and sports medicine have been retracted for statistically improbable data patterns, data fabrication, duplicate publications and plagiarism”.

The ASC has since improved its funding guidelines to match best practice in other research fields, Menaspà says.

“There has historically been a focus on delivering products/services which are useful for athletes, which is great and we want to maintain this,” he says. “At the same time, science practice is improving, it’s changing, it’s growing, and we want to promote the uptake of contemporary research practices in sports research.”

His changes include creating a list of nine good research practices, based on a 2022 University of Sydney study of health and medical research by Joanna Diong. 

“ASC aims to be the first Australian funding scheme to encourage researchers to address all nine criteria,” he says.

The list includes registering study protocols, including statisticians in research teams and making data available. Even the nation’s major funders failed to meet all nine criteria, the 2022 study found.

Menaspà has also set up a “meta-research” programme within the ASC to improve its own practices.

“Currently it’s not common in sports [research] to conduct research on research, but we want to use research to improve the way we do things,” he says.

Most ASC research is carried out by practitioners, with Menaspà and a research manager the only full-time research professionals. ASC staff have recently published studies on female performance, sports injuries and illness.

A new “clearing house”, where sports research can be registered, and which offers resources such as suggestions on how research can help performance for those working in the field, has also been established. It lists possible sources of sports research funding beyond the ASC.

Meanwhile, the ASC convenes an annual Sports Technology and Applied Research Symposium, where researchers share their findings with each other and potential users.

“The peer review process [in publication] is a chance to highlight the quality of the research that we do,” Menaspà said.

CASE STUDY

Scientists and coaches in Australia are collaborating to create new ways for athletes to train

Two Australian researchers are walking the walk––or swimming the swim––when it comes to collaborative research.

A three-year project headed by Katie Slattery and Jamie Stanley, funded by the Australian Institute of Sport, is aiming to create a framework for “holistic” management of athletes’ training.

The project, which is two years into its term, is notable for several features: it eschewed a “research question” in favour of consulting with practitioners; it is prioritising results over publication; and it is building on connections both to support the work and to give it longevity.

Stanley, who is attached to the South Australian Sports Institute, where he is involved with Olympic swimmers and cyclists, and Paralympic cyclists, says: “We have both worked with athletes for quite a long time as physiologists and sports scientists. We’d faced challenges of working in that environment, and we could see that there were plenty of areas that could be improved upon. So part of that was around thinking about an athlete more holistically.

Slattery, who is a sports researcher at the University of Technology Sydney, says they began with consultations, approaching some of the national sports institute networks and holding interdisciplinary focus groups, with at least one athlete, one coach and one performance support staff member in each.

“Based on that we’ve come up with a framework that can help guide more holistic athlete preparation, and we’ve called that ‘performance-centred practice’,” she says.

Collaborative study

The initial research was done in conjunction with AusCycling and Swimming Australia, but Stanley says the framework can be applied more widely.

“I think that’s the cool thing about it,” he says. “It has potential to impact the system for able-bodied, para, a whole range of sports.”

While they developed the framework, they also looked for ways to test many technologies available in “real time” to improve training practices.

“With the evolution of wearable technology, every step, every breath, every heartbeat that an athlete takes can be measured both while they’re training and when they’re not training,” Slattery says.

Just as important was how to integrate “what the coach has seen, what the athlete is feeling, and what the technology is telling us”.

Slattery says they will speak again to coaches, athletes and performance support staff to get their feedback on a draft version of the performance-centred practice framework and adjust it as needed.

“By having these regular touchpoints with the people who will actually be implementing what the research is recommending, the aim is that it’s a much more usable, meaningful and impactful research outcome,” she says.

Final phase

The final, fifth phase of the research will be conducted with a few “select cycling coaches” who will apply the framework and give feedback. There is no intention to formally publish the results of that phase, Slattery says. “We want it to be as authentic as possible and allow the coaches and athletes freedom to be completely honest and share all their data without thinking that it’s going to be public.

Stanley says that while there’s an academic, peer-review literature aspect to the work, a more important part of it for them is its uptake across the system. Some sports are already implementing part of what they have found.

The research was designed to leverage all available resources. As well as the initial A$125,000 grant from the Australian Institute of Sport, researchers involved include multiple PhD students and honours students doing the applied research, with university funding, support from the South Australian Sports Institute and in-kind support. University of Technology Sydney, the universities of South Australia and Western Australia and Griffith University have all contributed.

Slattery says the collaboration has provided the time and the resources to answer the “real-life research questions”.

“When you’re day-to-day in the training environment, you don’t have time to write your ethics applications, to write your publications, to even apply for grants,” she says. “So it just expands the capacity of people who are working in the field to be able to get quality answers to their questions.

Even if they never publish phase five of the research, they will still achieve their performance metrics if it has strong impacts––something Slattery welcomes.

She says: “[There has been] a shift in the mindset of universities away from publications and towards, ‘How is your work impacting in the real world?’ that has also enabled this kind of research to happen.

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Why you might be writing funding bids with the wrong readers in mind

As Funding Insight eases into its summer break, we spare a thought for all our readers who won’t be able to spend as much time away from a computer screen as they might have liked because they have grant application deadlines looming in the coming months.

To help focus your minds, we republish this reflection from May 2021 on who you will be writing for as you work up your bid. As the article makes plain, you won’t be writing for a panel of fearsome, omniscient mega-minds but rather inquisitive, intelligent but time-limited and pressured researchers (and others), much like you. And that requires a different mindset…

When you’re writing a research grant application, who are you writing for? And who should you be writing for? Considering these questions matters because tailoring your bid to suit the needs of its key audience (peer reviewers and panel members) will raise its chances of getting funded. But before you focus on who you are writing for, you might have to admit that a mixture of education and wishful thinking has led you to write for the wrong people.

You are not writing for teacher 

For most of our time in formal education, we write for an audience of one: for a teacher at school, a tutor at university and external examiners at crunch moments. We would write about a topic that our sole reader knew more about than we did, with the purpose of convincing her to grade our knowledge of one of her specialist areas as highly as possible.

This starts to change through masters or PhD theses and into early career and academic publications and grant proposals. You’re no longer writing for the all-knowing, functionally omniscient reader: the locus of expertise has started to shift. As a grant applicants you are still writing for highly skilled and knowledgeable people, but their expertise is not the same as yours. The chances are that you—not teacher, not reviewer—are now the expert in the topic you are writing about.

To quote Darth Vader as he battles his former mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi: “The circle is now complete. When I left you I was but the learner. Now, I am the master.” Now you are the master, you need to write like the master, not for the master.

You are not writing for your ideal reviewer

Because even if she exists, she’s probably too busy. Or conflicted. Or the funder’s review scheme doesn’t know who she is. Ask anyone who has—like me—served on a funding panel, and you’ll find decisions are taken on each application relatively quicky, especially compared to the time they take to write. There will not be a special one-day conference convened to discuss the merits of your proposal, and the scrutiny it will be subjected to will be less ‘fine-toothed comb’ and more ‘quick onceover with the clippers’ until a broadly defensible result is achieved.

Now we can return to our original question: who are you writing for?

You are writing for busy, best-available-reviewers

Your reviewers are mostly researchers too. And as researchers they’re under much the same pressures you are, only they’ve also got one or a whole bunch of proposals to review. It’s not that different from having a pile of marking to do, only they’re not the expert. They’re an expert, just not on every subject contained in that pile of work. As an applicant, you’d be well advised to make life as easy as possible for them by expressing your ideas as clearly and unambiguously as possible.

But to what end? Now you know your audience a bit better it’s worth considering the effect you want your text to have on them, or in existential terms…

What are you trying to achieve?

In your grant application, you’re trying to achieve three things—explain, inspire and reassure—in order to persuade.

1. Explain

Remember, you’re the master now, you can’t assume the reviewer knows the field as well as you do. So you need to explain what you propose to do: what are your research questions/hypothesis and methods, why are these the right methods, and how does the whole thing hang together as a coherent package? 

I don’t know who first said this, but a really well-written application flatters the reader into thinking she understands it, while a poorly written one beats her over the head with her own ignorance. As a non-academic, I don’t expect to understand how a technical proposal works, but I expect to understand what it’s for.

This is one of the hardest things for researchers new to grant writing to get right. Many drafts I see start at the wrong level of focus—they’ve zoomed in much too closely onto the key details that are most exercising the applicant but lack any kind of broader context or overview and end up functionally incomprehensible. Reviewers won’t recommend funding they can’t understand.

2. Inspire

Many early draft applications I see don’t adequately explain the novelty of what’s proposed, what the contribution of the programme of work will be, nor why it matters. When I ask, applicants will often look confused because to them, it’s obvious. It’s not, because it’s implicit. It needs to be explicit. Don’t leave your busy, best-available-reviewer to puzzle it out for herself.  Don’t overclaim, don’t overhype, but don’t undersell your work either. If you’re unable to clearly articulate the significance, novelty and contribution of your proposal, it’s too soon to apply for funding.

3. Reassure

Don’t submit research applications, submit research plans. You’re asking a funder to take a punt on your proposal ahead of others, so you need to make the funding panel feel confident about that decision. You do this by concisely and efficiently citing the right literature, by having the right research team with appropriate track records, and by producing robust, high-quality responses to the more administrative parts of the form. You can also reassure with your risk management plans, especially your plan Bs for if an experiment doesn’t produce the finding you predict. How might you recalibrate or refocus the project?

4. Persuade

Funding is competitive. There are more good ideas than there is funding for good ideas. It’s not like an A grade at school or a driving licence, or even a PhD, where there is an unlimited number available and where everyone who deserves one can have one. It’s not enough to be good, you need to finish in the top tier to get funding. You need to be more persuasive about the excellence of your proposal than the competition.

You can’t control what other applications will go to the same panel for funding, nor their respective merits. But you can give yourself the best possible chance by making sure your application is pitched at your actual audience, the best-available-reviewer—not the all-knowing teacher, your PhD supervisor or Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Adam Golberg is strategic research development manager (research growth) at the University of Nottingham. He tweets @Cash4Questions and blogs at socialscienceresearchfunding.co.uk.

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Cooperative Research Australia conference hears that university-bred ideas are the hardest to deal with

Intellectual property ownership and the failure of researchers, entrepreneurs and investors to agree on goals are hampering the commercialisation of Australian research, a national conference has heard.

At Cooperative Research Australia’s annual conference on 23 July, Mark Gustowski from the venture capital firm Mandalay said that IP issues could be stumbling blocks to investment.

“If we’re looking to invest in a company as a venture fund, the preference would always be that the company has the ownership of the IP,” he said, as this is part of how investors try to mitigate their risks. “If the IP is owned by the university, that is very, very challenging,” he said, adding that IP originating in industry initiatives is often easier to deal with.

While he would “love” to see standard agreements that simplify IP issues, he said: “I don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon.”

Pauline Fetaui of the tech innovation platform ACS Labs said that IP issues could be a “stranglehold” on commercialisation and that there could be a “scarcity mindset” around ownership of ideas. “What are the motives and what are we trying to protect here?” she asked.

At another conference session, Chris Downs, director of the University of Queensland’s Food and Beverage Accelerator, funded by the government’s Trailblazer Universities programme, said that Australia needs “a more mature and more open approach to handling IP”, compared with the current “very conservative, very restrictive approach”.

In his role with the trailblazer, Downs said that IP was being freed up. “Anything we invest in, all the IP belongs to the [new] company. We don’t take any equity.”

However, he said, “only 12 or 14 universities are involved in trailblazers. What are the opportunities for the others?”

Common goals

Building trust and relationships between research teams and those who would bring the ideas to market was also an issue for the speakers.

Fetaui said that researchers should be looking for their “first founding [management] team” very early, adding that the issue of links between researchers and entrepreneurs was such a concern that her company was planning an internal programme to tackle it this year.

When moving to commercialise research, company founders need to “look past the first cheque or investment”, she said. “You have to understand the end in mind…but you also have to understand everything you have to do to get there.”

Gustowski said that “great technologies still require amazing teams to take it to market, and there’s a shortage of commercialisation talent in Australia”.

Other speakers at the conference said that market needs should be considered earlier in research projects.

“Marketing is still seen as this extra cost instead of a massive investment,” said Natalie Chapman from the commercialisation agency Gemaker. “[Marketing] is crucial because marketing is about fulfilling a need.”

Fetaui said the Australian community should be helped to understand the potential of research to improve national issues. More people might invest “if we did a better job—including in my role—of exposing the problems that are being solved in research right now”.

Gustowski said he would like to see part of the money that goes to the academia-industry Cooperative Research Centre programme “carved off” to support early stage investment. Cooperative Research Australia represents the interests of the CRCs.

He said that research and innovation are among the first things “to fall off the government agenda when push comes to shove”.

Despite a reported increase in investment in climate change-related commercialisation, Australia is in “a bit of a capital drought right now”, he said.

But he added that existing schemes such as the R&D Tax Incentive are useful. “It balances Australia’s cost of research out to what it [would] cost for our northern neighbours,” he said.

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Report provides recommendations for Australia’s academia-industry centres, including on diversity

Australia’s academia-industry Cooperative Research Centre programme should broaden its talent recruitment and development to “recognise diverse educational backgrounds, experiences and skills…and foster a culture that values different perspectives in entrepreneurship”, a report has said.

Cooperative Research Australia, which represents the interests of the CRCs, released the Mapping Entrepreneurial Alumni report on 22 July, as the Australian government prepares for a national review of its funding and policies around research.

The report says the CRCs have trained hundreds of entrepreneurs with research backgrounds and led to the creation of at least 144 spin-off companies. “CRC alumni typically transition from traditional roles in academia and large corporations to entrepreneurial positions in CRCs, startups and small and medium-sized enterprises, indicating a shift towards more innovative and autonomous career paths.”

However, “common obstacles [to commercial success] include management deficiencies, funding limitations and intellectual property issues, highlighting the need for enhanced leadership training, financial strategies and effective IP education and management”.

There is also “a notable gender imbalance in entrepreneurial roles, indicating a need for targeted initiatives to support and encourage female entrepreneurs”.

As well as broader recruitment, the report recommends better mentorship and networking among the CRCs. 

Vital factors

The CRC programme, launched in 1990, supports industry centres and one-off projects where academics, industry and government authorities collaborate to address social issues and come up with solutions.

The report’s authors surveyed more than 200 people who had worked for CRCs, more than a quarter of whom had been involved in a spin-off company. They reported that factors such as retaining important staff, being able to move products to larger scales and clarity around IP were key to success. Others referred to “tall poppy syndrome”, where success is attacked, and the difficulty of accessing export markets.

“Access to adequate capital, continuous funding, foreign investments and robust venture capital support from the onset [was] vital,” the report says.

Backgrounds

A separate survey of post-CRC entrepreneurs found that business, science, mathematics and technical qualifications predominated, with much lower numbers in categories such as the humanities and the creative arts.

The respondents’ sector backgrounds varied, with some starting their careers in pure research, others in industry and some in the public sector.

They tended to work in east coast cities, particularly Melbourne, and to “migrate” from regional areas to larger cities over their careers.

The report was funded by the Rozetta Institute, a non-profit body advocating for and funding cooperative research, which itself was created from the work of a CRC.

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Users of national e-science platform told to prepare for change

The New Zealand eScience Infrastructure programme has begun a significant upgrade of its technology.

In a July update, science engagement manager Georgina Rae said the work had already begun at the University of Auckland’s Tamaki data centre.

The programme operates New Zealand’s high-performance computing facilities for researchers in a partnership between the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, the Universities of Auckland and Otago, Landcare Research and the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research.

The upgrade will provide “more powerful central processing units, next-generation graphics processing units, enhanced storage capabilities and new cloud-native development environments”. Announced in February, it will cost NZ$3.5 million in a deal with Hewlett Packard, Xenon, Sempre and Dell.

Users will begin moving to a new platform in August, with the programme asking for expressions of interest from potential “early access” users. The new platform is expected to be fully online in September.

The programme is “planning to run migration in stages in order to avoid any lengthy outages and to maintain a smooth user experience”. It has warned that some users may need to pre-test their use of the system before migration.

Future of e-research

Programme director Nick Jones said that the service was “seeing a diversity of computational and data management needs driving demand for a richer array of services” among its researcher stakeholders.

“With new partners coming to the table through our infrastructure refresh, we’re looking forward to what this enables for how we power the future of e-research and the future of computational and artificial intelligence capabilities in the country.”

The programme is running “office hours” online chats to help users plan the transition.

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This week: a special journal edition, Plant and Food Research appointments and booming Antarctic studies

In depth: The New Zealand eScience Infrastructure programme has begun a significant upgrade of its technology.

Full story: New Zealand begins e-science infrastructure upgrade

Also this week from Research Professional News

Tackling climate change requires R&D commitment, experts say—Underfunding of science could undermine New Zealand government’s five-point strategy 

Here is the rest of the New Zealand news this week…

Journal plans research edition

The New Zealand Science Review has said it will publish an entire edition devoted to the “wider research system” in the country. Its current edition focuses on the “crisis” in universities and it says that “funding cuts are leading to widespread job losses and concerns about generational damage to the research and science system”. It has called for submissions on a range of topics, including the impact of research, the history of institutions, workforce issues and how to get “more effective and stable support of research and science”. The journal is run by the New Zealand Association of Scientists. 

Plant and Food Research appoints directors

Candace Kinser and Paul Connell have joined the board of Plant and Food Research, a Crown Research Institute. Kinser has a technology business background and is a former chief executive of the industry body NZTech. Connell is a chartered accountant who is currently chair of the certification authority Telarc. Board chair Nicola Shadbolt welcomed the pair, saying that “their experience, particularly of organisations with a strong scientific foundation, will hold Plant and Food Research in good stead”.

HRC seeks biomedical expertise

The Health Research Council of New Zealand is seeking members for its Biomedical Research Committee. The council says it wants “researchers who demonstrate strategic thinking, can see the bigger picture and have a commitment to advance Māori health and the health of communities experiencing highest health needs in New Zealand through robust processes”. Its call adds: “The appointment of further basic biomedical, clinical trial and Māori expertise to the committee will seek to diversify and strengthen commitment across all areas within the HRC’s biomedical research portfolio.” Nominations close on 19 August.

Antarctic research boom

Antarctica New Zealand has said that growing interest in Antarctic research was reflected in its most recent work season. In its annual report, ANZ chief scientific adviser Jordy Hendrikx said that “the season encompassed a substantial increase of science activity relative to recent seasons”. “This increase was clearly evident across all science event metrics, including an increase in the number of science events and a more than doubling of the cumulative number of science days in Antarctica. The number of peer-reviewed scientific publications arising from ANZ support also increased relative to past years.”

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Government programme focuses on minerals, sustainable fuels, digital agriculture, quantum, AI and advanced manufacturing

The first investment plan for the Australian government’s A$1.6 billion Economic Accelerator programme has been released.

Round one, following on from three “seed funding” pilot calls in 2023 and early 2024, opened for applications from eligible higher education providers on 17 July, with A$180 million available.

Six “focus areas” are listed in the 2024-25 investment plan: critical and strategic minerals processing; sustainable fuels; digital agriculture such as automation and robotics; quantum technologies; artificial intelligence; and advanced manufacturing.

Released by the accelerator’s advisory board, the plan calls for “projects aligned with national research priorities with high commercial opportunity”.

Board chair Jeff Connolly said the six focus areas were “identified through extensive engagement and have been selected to provide translation opportunities for the Australian research sector going forward”.

“The identified focus areas will help guide the university sector in selecting projects and industry partners that will support and further their research to achieve mutually beneficial translation and commercialisation goals,” he wrote.

The focus areas are also aligned with the priorities listed under the A$15bn National Reconstruction Fund, which is aimed at transforming Australia’s industry and economy.

Ignite and Innovate

The grants programme is split into early-stage “proof of concept” Ignite grants (to receive A$60m in this round) and later-stage “proof of scale” Innovate grants (receiving A$120m).

The Ignite grants will provide up to A$500,000 for a year, while Innovate grants range up to A$5m for two years.

Projects that receive grants will work with the accelerator’s “priority managers”, who will help researchers “foster connections and secure formal collaboration arrangements with industry partners”.

The plan also suggests that projects that succeed in the accelerator programme may transition to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation’s Main Sequence venture fund, or receive support from private backers.

Following the pilot rounds, the accelerator has added extra “points” to the selection score of projects led by female or First Nations chief investigators.

The plan says there is no set ratio of funding for the six focus areas, and “grants as well as the relative funding against different priority areas will be driven by the quality of applications received”.

Applications for the first round of grants are due by 28 August, with two funding rounds a year expected in the coming years.

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Australian agency seeks “root cause” of widespread issue and praises draft structure of tertiary commission

The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency continues to be concerned about wage underpayment at Australian universities, suggesting it points to deeper governance issues.

In a webinar on 4 July, Teqsa’s acting chief commissioner Adrienne Nieuwenhuis spoke of current “regulatory risks and issues”.

“The top two on my list would be everything to do with international education and international education integrity and the second on my list would be student wellbeing and safety, particularly having seen what’s occurred with regards to the student protests on campus,” she said.

She is also concerned about governance and the “robustness of self-assurance processes”. In 2022, a Senate report said that “around half of Australia’s universities have been implicated in underpayment of staff, with underpayments affecting both casual academic and professional staff”.

There is a “continuing problem we’re having in the sector with wage underpayment”, Nieuwenhuis said. “When two providers tell you they’re having a problem, that’s acceptable. When a few providers start to tell you they have problems, it becomes a little bit of an uncomfortable coincidence. But we’re nearly up to 30 providers who have informed us and [the Fair Work Commission] with regard to wage underpayment. Which tells me there is something deeply going on in our providers with regards to governance, risk, risk assurance [and] controls.”

She added: “I’m starting to see that we’re needing root cause analysis, not just the fixing of a particular problem.”

Other items on her list include academic integrity, artificial intelligence and the “financial standing of providers”.

“We are definitely seeing a weakening in the financial position of many of our providers, and that has a range of potential risks in terms of compliance with the standards and the quality of education…The worst-case scenario would be provider default.”

Teqsa continues “always to have a very close eye on everything to do with student experience”, she said.

Commission consultation

Nieuwenhuis also addressed the draft structure for the Australian Tertiary Education Commission, which is currently open for consultation.

“From Teqsa’s perspective, I think it’s good to see in the consultation paper a governance structure which separates Teqsa from the commission, so that the commission is intended to be a policy and a funding body, leaving regulation and quality assurance quite separate in Teqsa,” she said.

“Some of the things that are in that consultation paper, like performance measures, will be beneficial to Teqsa as well. We already look at a range of data with regard to the performance of providers, which informs our risk frameworks and our regulatory processes, so we’re looking forward to working with the commission on some of those broader issues as well.”

The separation between Teqsa and the commission is positive, she said. “I think it’s very important that those who fund higher education are not also the regulators.”

New strategy

Teqsa chief executive Mary Russell told the webinar that the agency was working on a “new strategy to guide Teqsa’s future regulatory approach”.

She said that the sector would be consulted on changes in a process that would take up to 18 months.

“It will support us to meet the expectations of government and sector stakeholders, including both providers and students,” she said.

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This week: animal research, critical minerals, RNA and a petition against university job losses

In depth: The first investment plan for the Australian government’s A$1.6 billion Economic Accelerator programme has been released.

Full story: Australia’s Economic Accelerator offers A$180m in first full round

Also this week from Research Professional News

University regulator still worried about wage underpayment—Australian agency seeks “root cause” of widespread issue and praises draft structure of tertiary commission

Australian disease centre ramps up bird flu surveillance—Scientists, industry and government are “all preparing for the potential introduction of H5N1 into Australia”

Adelaide University formally launched—New Australian institution, formed through a merger, will start taking students in 2026

Here is the rest of the Australia news this week…

NSW funds non-animal research push

The New South Wales government has committed A$4.5 million to help researchers avoid using animals in their work. On 18 July, the state’s Office for Health and Medical Research said the money would fund a “three pillar” strategy comprising: “a research pillar to accelerate research progress, which will include a competitive research grant programme”; money to develop a new Non-Animal Technologies Network; and funding for “a working group to develop regulatory approaches for non-animal technologies”. The Non-Animal Technologies Network will include experts from the University of New South Wales, the University of Wollongong, the University of Technology Sydney, the University of Sydney and the University of Newcastle, as well as the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, the Children’s Medical Research Institute and the Hunter Medical Research Institute.

Critical minerals R&D funding

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation will receive A$2.5 million for a research hub focused on “critical minerals”. The hub’s work will include an “international R&D collaboration scan, strategic R&D projects across critical minerals technologies, international science delegations, scholarship networks and a critical minerals research summer school for domestic and international researchers”. On 18 July, resources minister Madeleine King said: “The valuable work by the R&D hub will also support the government’s Future Made in Australia ambition and ensure Australia works with international partners on environmental and social governance standards, commercialisation of research and intellectual property rights on critical minerals”. The hub was first announced in the October 2022 budget.

Union fights against job losses from proposed number caps

The National Tertiary Education Union is urging members to sign a petition against job losses from proposed caps on international student numbers at Australian institutions. In an email to members on 17 July, national president Alison Barnes said that “the numbers are yet to be determined and the full extent of the impact is still unknown. What we do know is that institutions cannot be allowed to use these proposed changes to prematurely threaten job cuts.” The petition reads: “Higher education workers demand the federal government ensures that there are no job losses as a result of any hard caps placed on international student numbers.”

RNA blueprint released

The Australian government has released a five-point plan for developing RNA medical research and applications. The plan, released on 16 July, calls for work to: connect and promote the national RNA ecosystem; increase skills and access to infrastructure; improve research, translation and investment; lead RNA regulation and guidance development by continuing to build regulatory capabilities; and build and strengthen international partnerships to work on shared interests. The RNA plan falls under the national medical science co-investment plan released in April.

Clinical data sharing encouraged

The Australian Research Data Commons is promoting greater sharing of data from clinical trials. On 10 July, the ARDC ran a multi-agency seminar about its Health Studies Australian National Data Asset and the Health Data Australia catalogue of trials. It said there was a “global shift towards data sharing to improve the integrity, productivity and impact of clinical data”. Seminar presenter Angela Webster, director of evidence integration at the National Health and Medical Research Council Clinical Trial Centre, said that “if you share data, you can extend the life and the visibility of your research and facilitate new collaborations. There are many more uses for data, beyond answering the specific focus question that the data was originally collected for.”

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Underfunding of science could undermine New Zealand government’s five-point strategy

New Zealand’s new national climate strategy lacks the evidence-based policy and commitment to research it needs, leading scientists have said.

The strategy, released this month by climate change minister Simon Watts, outlines five “pillars” of climate change action, one of which is titled: “World-leading climate innovation boosts the economy.” The government has promised more details on achieving its goals through the second national emissions reduction plan, which it is consulting on until 21 August.

Geoff Willmott, a researcher at the MacDiarmid Institute for advanced materials, said the potential of New Zealand’s science sector needs to be backed to meet the goals in the strategy. “The reality is that any chance for New Zealand to be ‘boosting its economy through world-leading climate innovation’ will be challenged in the context of long-term underfunding of our research sector. Businesses and farmers won’t, and can’t, do this on their own,” he said.

Willmott, who is also an assistant dean for research commercialisation in the University of Auckland’s science faculty, said that the vision of a “win-win” based on “local intellectual property addressing global climate issues while at the same time making us wealthier and more resilient” was threatened by research underfunding.

‘Coherent plan needed’

Anita Wreford, an applied economist at Lincoln University, said the climate strategy appeared to be working against other policies, such as the removal of electric vehicle incentives.

“I sincerely hope we will see more detail and a coherent plan that sits behind this strategy,” she said. “It is hard to see how this strategy gives sufficient thought and gravity to securing a liveable and prosperous future for Aotearoa New Zealand in a rapidly changing climate.”

Alex Heiser, chief scientist at AgResearch, a Crown Research Institute, said that the effects of climate change were already being felt by New Zealand agriculture, but “right now there are limited options available to farmers to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions without cutting livestock numbers and putting their profitability at risk”.

“Longer-term commitment is needed in the research and development of tools such as modified pasture, and methane-reducing feed additives or vaccines, which are complex and take time.”

University of Canterbury political science professor Bronwyn Hayward noted that it was “good news” that “all our major political parties now recognise that there are urgent pressing problems due to climate change”. 

“This was not the case even eight years ago,” she said.

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Lessons from a Danish research institute’s funding engagement scheme

The funding world is a jungle of possibilities. For classic research funding, it might be top-down or bottom-up; in innovation, dilutive or non-dilutive; and then there is the overload of abbreviations: RIAs, IAs and CSAs…

Truly, guiding researchers to suitable funding opportunities is no easy task.

To help researchers find and engage with the right schemes for them, many research managers and administrators organise awareness-raising activities. But they face well-known issues: researchers are busy, emails can be overlooked, central events rarely fit everyone’s schedules and targeted listings are resource-intensive. All too often, research support offices risk becoming passive rather than actively building a pipeline of future proposals.

Our journey

At the Danish Technological Institute, the research managers and administrators in our international centre have developed an awareness-raising process that works well for the nearly 1,100 specialists employed by the institute. This effort has increased both the number of proposals we submit and the number of projects we win. While every institution is different, we believe a well-thought-out awareness-raising initiative can bear fruit. Here, we outline our initiative, known as Outreach.

DTI is a research technology organisation, conducting applied research that bridges the gap between academia and commercial R&D. We’re an independent non-profit that operates test and demonstration facilities, so our researchers also perform commercial contracting for both Danish and international customers, and many clients become partners in our research projects.

It was the launch of the EU’s Horizon Europe programme in 2021 that prompted us to think strategically about our awareness raising. We decided to reinvent our approach based on the challenges we faced during previous framework programmes and put the user experience of our researchers at the heart of our work.

In particular, we knew that it was in sprawling top-down programmes such as Horizon’s second pillar, on global challenges and industrial competitiveness, that awareness raising could have the greatest return on investment. So while our centralised team of seven full-time research managers and administrators also supports proposals in a range of other programmes, our proactive efforts are focused firmly on pillar two and its associated joint undertakings.

Intense knowledge

When we redesigned our awareness-raising initiative, we set out to promote internal collaboration between departments and encourage our researchers to coordinate proposals themselves. We knew we’d be facing challenges along the way—particularly the workload that proactive awareness raising would bring to our small research support office.

Our Outreach initiative, scalable by design, has grown and evolved since its 2021 rollout but the core remains the same: we start by analysing the pillar two work programmes, which outline hundreds of funding opportunities for specific challenges. Our team reads all 1,500+ pages of those programmes—sometimes multiple times as drafts develop—to build intense knowledge of the opportunities available. We refresh our knowledge annually and hold office-wide workshops whenever new work programmes are published.

We also conduct ‘interest-mapping meetings’ with DTI’s 20+ R&D departments to stay updated on their interests, capabilities and priorities. These meetings, held at least twice a year, involve two research managers and administrators and a handful of senior researchers from each department. We’ve found that a mixture of shared note-taking and regular conversations keeps us up to date on various departments’ interests and ensures we always know which research managers and administrators will have the latest information.

Armed with detailed knowledge, our team matches researchers with funding opportunities, producing longlists at departmental level. These lists include details like expected project budgets and technology readiness levels, helping researchers make informed choices. We review these longlists in targeting meetings with departmental researchers, helping them select a shortlist of target calls.

We’ve found that well-informed research managers and administrators can really help researchers in prioritising multiple attractive opportunities due at the same time and understanding the funding programmes’ technicalities. Even experienced applicants can benefit from our knowledge of the political thinking behind specific ‘destinations’ within Horizon Europe, or our inside track knowledge on what’s coming.

Building capacity

In parallel, we conduct capacity-building initiatives including an institute-wide network focused on Horizon Europe, fostering peer-to-peer learning and expert insights through regular meetings, workshops and newsletters. We also run workshops and training courses to improve proposal-writing skills and build internal networks between departments.

This process puts our researchers in a strong position as they start engaging with their networks and forming consortia. While not every effort results in a proposal, this approach feeds a steady stream of engagement into our proposal-writing pipeline. More proposals entering the pipeline leads to more submissions, more projects won and more top-notch research.

Of course, the Outreach initiative is labour-intensive, so in late 2022 we started a concerted effort to develop tools to reduce the workload and automate tasks such as compiling lists of funding opportunities. Thanks to this, we created the Outreach Table, a digital platform on DTI’s intranet, which helps researchers see which of their peers are considering bids to similar opportunities.

Our Outreach work has certainly improved collaboration within DTI, and our Outreach Table has enabled early proposal collaborations to happen. The systematic approach has demystified Horizon Europe for our researchers, lowering barriers and increasing engagement in international projects. This has driven up interest and success rates in the programme and had wider positive impacts across DTI.

Pro tips

Our Outreach programme was designed specifically for DTI and will not be universally applicable. However, we firmly believe that a proactive approach to awareness raising is worth the effort. Here are some key takeaways from our experience:

• Decide which programmes to target—focus on those offering the greatest return on investment (which may not necessarily be financial).
• Adapt processes to your specific case—tailor your approach to your researchers and institution.
• Review and revise your process—be flexible to meet colleagues’ needs.
• It’s a team effort—collaborate with other research managers and administrators for greater effectiveness.
• Embrace digital tools—use technology to ease the workload.
• Accept that it takes time to save time—invest upfront in developing tools and processes for long-term benefits.

What’s next?

While we’re proud of our Outreach initiative, it’s still very much a work in progress. This year, we’ve begun developing tools that incorporate generative artificial intelligence to help us in our work while also keeping our eyes open for commercial tools that can directly help or inspire us.

We’re also now focusing on how to support researchers’ participation in external partnership activities earlier on in the process.

And we keep our ears open to ideas from outside DTI, and that certainly includes other research managers, research administrators and research support offices, so if you’d like to discuss any of the ideas presented here or maybe your own awareness efforts, please do get in touch.

Luke John Murphy is a consultant, Paula Andrea Páez is a senior consultant, and John Stian Haukeland is EU funding manager at DTI.

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Scientists, industry and government are “all preparing for the potential introduction of H5N1 into Australia”

Australian scientists have said that the risk of a “highly pathogenic” strain of bird flu entering the country has put them on high alert.

In a media briefing on 15 July, researchers from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation’s Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness said they had ramped up a surveillance programme that monitors wild birds.

They are particularly concerned about a strain of avian influenza known as H5N1 2.3.4.4b, saying it has appeared since 2020 and has reached every continent except Australia.

Debbie Eagles, director of the centre, said the strain had had “a significant impact” wherever it had appeared. The centre, industry and government authorities are “all preparing for the potential introduction of H5N1 into Australia”.

There have been four outbreaks of other strains of bird flu in eastern Australia during 2024, from three different wild sources. The differences between the outbreaks were established by the centre’s genetic sequencing programme. Eagles said that since May this year, the Victoria-based centre had carried out 3,000 test procedures on 1,000 samples from birds.

Risk-targeted surveillance

Frank Wong, a senior research scientist at the centre and a committee member of the global Offlu research network on animal influenza, told the briefing that wild ducks and geese were a “natural host reservoir” for avian influenza. He said it could become “highly pathogenic” and even mutate when it crossed into agricultural poultry.

The Australian centre is a reference laboratory for the World Organisation for Animal Health and assists researchers in the region in monitoring the spread of diseases, he said.

Wong said the most likely way the strain of concern would enter the country was from the north. Due to the size of the continent, “surveillance with total coverage is challenging and pretty much impossible”, he said, and the centre is using “risk-targeted surveillance of populations and geographic areas known to increase the chance of crossover into farm animals”.

Data collected by the surveillance programme are shared with the centre’s counterparts around the world. Eagles said the programme had recently been given more certainty and additional funding.

Identifying outbreaks

Eagles added that there was a risk to Australia’s native animals as well. “Wild birds may become not just infected but get sick from this virus, as well as potentially some mammal species,” she said.

So far, cases of bird flu in humans internationally have been limited to people who have been in contact with sick animals, and it has not been known to move from human to human.

Wong said that it was critical for any outbreaks in farm animals to be identified and “locked down” as soon as possible.

“People from the state agencies that are controlling these outbreaks are very well aware of the biosafety risks” of human infection, he said.

However, Eagles said the preparations being made for the H5N1 strain in Australia were across “not just agriculture but also environment and [human] health” agencies.

Wong said that global control of the disease would require an “active and continuous virus surveillance programme” in all nations.

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New Australian institution, formed through a merger, will start taking students in 2026

South Australia’s new Adelaide University, a merger between the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia, has been formally launched.

The new university is due to begin taking students at the start of 2026.

In a statement on 15 July, the joint vice-chancellors of the new university—Peter Høj (pictured, left), current head of the University of Adelaide, and David Lloyd (pictured, right), head of the University of South Australia—said it was “a momentous step”.

They pledged that all the “major disciplines” currently available would continue to be supported.

A new site for Adelaide University was also launched, with information for prospective students. It lists five key research themes: creative and cultural; defence and national security; food, agriculture and wine; personal and societal health; and sustainable green transition.

The university will aim to be ranked in the world’s 100 top research universities and to be “number one in Australia for industry research income and engagement”.

The University of Adelaide is already in the elite Group of Eight research universities, with Go8 chief executive Vicki Thomson confirming that Adelaide University will be a member. “The merger…will create quality at the scale needed,” she said.

Education minister Jason Clare said the new institution would be “a powerhouse of research and a beacon for both domestic and international students”.

Merger concerns

The National Tertiary Education Union has raised questions about the pressure that merger planning is putting on workers at the universities.

In an April bulletin, the union urged University of Adelaide staff to seek help with their workloads.

When the bill to create the merger was introduced to South Australia’s parliament in October 2023, Greens MP Tammy Franks opposed it, saying it was “rushed”.

She said the two universities had different cultures and that the union’s research had found that a large number of staff did not have confidence in management decision-making around the merger.

The merger will affect around 3,000 staff at the two universities.

In their statement on 15 July, the vice-chancellors said that “the University of South Australia and the University of Adelaide will continue to serve their communities through 2024 and 2025 and maintain necessary functions into 2026 to support the transition”.  

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Save Science Coalition says impact of funding cuts will be felt for a long time

Science in New Zealand is facing a “generational crisis” due to funding cuts, a coalition of science groups has said.

The Save Science Coalition released a report called Science Under Threat on 12 July, detailing recent budget and structural decisions. It says that total job losses across the sector will range between 349 and 359, with hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts.

These include the capital funding for the cancelled Wellington Science City; NZ$64 million annually from the “expired” National Science Challenges, which wound up at the end of June; and numerous smaller reductions to both direct funding and contestable grant schemes.

The group is calling on the government to raise national science investment from just below 1.5 per cent of GDP to 2 per cent.

Also of concern is what the report describes as cuts to “evidence-focused roles” in various public sector agencies, threatening “good decision-making” in government.

The coalition “urgently wants to see the cuts to science funding and science staff across public science institutions halted and reversed”.

Scientists leaving the country

The coalition is led by the New Zealand Association of Scientists. Its 26 members include the New Zealand Ecological Society, the Tertiary Education Union and the New Zealand Public Service Association.

In an introduction to the report, NZAS co-president Lucy Stewart said that the “public good” work of science needs to be supported.

“In the coming years, we are likely to see many scientists leave the country as their jobs are cut and their paths to other local employment are few,” she said, adding that current reviews such as the one being carried out by the government’s Science System Advisory Group would not be completed in time to prevent losses.

The report singles out New Zealand’s “internationally unusual [funding] structures, which are a source of instability and excessive competition, fuelling growing confusion and distrust”.

Declining university revenues and rising costs have also impacted the system, the report says.

Valuable feedback

While the Science System Advisory Group and the connected University Advisory Group are due to report to government ministers this year, the report says that the previous government’s Future Pathways reform programme contained “valuable feedback” that should be used.

It warns that the impact of the current cuts might “show up years down the track” because of the long timeframe for scientific work to show results.

“Right now, we urgently need to save science funding and science jobs before the damage to the sector becomes any worse.”

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This week: an agriculture graduate school, Lincoln Agritech progress and racism against Māori medical students

In depth: Science in New Zealand is facing a “generational crisis” due to funding cuts, a coalition of science groups has said.

Full story: Science cuts in New Zealand ‘are causing a generational crisis’

Also this week from Research Professional News

Application cap on Smart Ideas funding scheme causes concern—Limits introduced in New Zealand fund may hit early career researchers hardest 

Here is the rest of the New Zealand news this week…

Joint graduate school to continue

Plant and Food Research, a Crown Research Institute, has signed an agreement guaranteeing the future of the joint graduate school it runs with the University of Auckland. The school, established in 2010, allows postgraduate students to work with Plant and Food Research on “real-world problems and gain industry perspective, as well as research excellence”, the institute said. “Over the 2024 academic year, the joint graduate school is supporting more than 40 postgraduate students, including six master’s students and 37 PhD students.”

Lincoln Agritech turns 60

The research firm Lincoln Agritech says it has evolved significantly since its foundation in 1964. In an annual review published this month, the company profiled its staff and research work. Of its 83 employees, 32 are scientists and 48 are from New Zealand. Interim chief executive Richard Gordon wrote in the review that in the face of “funding constraints, uncertainty and the impacts of inflation”, the company had “refreshed our ambition and set clear impacts and outcomes”. It reported 16 peer-reviewed journal publications, 39 conference presentations, 33 client reports and 50 publications in “popular press and trade journals” for the year. The company is owned by Lincoln University.

Māori medical students suffer racism

The authors of a study of how racism affects Māori medical students and doctors say that “urgent systemic change” is needed. In a study published this month, researchers from the Universities of Auckland and Otago found that over 90 per cent of 405 respondents “had experienced or witnessed racism in medical education, training or work environments”. “Medical education and workplaces should address the high reported experience of multiple forms of racism, discrimination, bullying and harassment for Māori medical students and physicians,” they wrote. The research was funded by the Health Research Council of New Zealand.

The post New Zealand news roundup: 11-17 July appeared first on Research Professional News.

Limits introduced in New Zealand fund may hit early career researchers hardest

Application caps in New Zealand’s flagship Endeavour Fund may have unintended consequences, the New Zealand Association of Scientists has warned.

On 2 July, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment announced that institutions would be allocated limited numbers of application slots for the fund’s Smart Ideas stream.

Association co-president Troy Baisden told Research Professional News that there were “significant concerns” in the sector about the changes.

“It seems clear the changes are motivated largely by less resources within the ministry to staff a two-stage assessment process. This is concerning because it pushes cost of screening onto institutions,” he said.

“The caps are simply an imperfect kludge at a time when many individuals will be trying to replace large blocks of funding lost from the National Science Challenges [which have now ended] and projects undertaken directly for ministries. This change will worsen the impacts of hyper-competition for limited funding.

“The big losers are likely to be the early and mid-career researchers who were able to access this funding mechanism as a significant stepping stone in their careers.”

More conservative system

Smart Ideas grants offer up to NZ$1 million over two or three years. The larger Research Programmes stream has not been given caps, but both programmes suffered small cuts in total funding in the 2025-27 Endeavour Fund investment plan published on 2 July.

Greg Bodeker, director of the private research firm Bodeker Scientific, said he believed the changes would be “bad for New Zealand”.

His firm has been allocated two application slots due to its past success, and it currently holds a Smart Ideas grant. But he said that the changes would make application slots “precious” and would cause institutions to overlook early career researchers. Institutions will “back proposals which have a higher chance of success, and they are more likely to be led by seasoned principal investigators”. This would be despite Smart Ideas being aimed at innovative ideas with commercial potential.

“I suspect it’s going to result in a more conservative science system and a more risk-averse science system.”

Bodeker said there might also be unexpected consequences where researchers sought to attach themselves to other projects to circumvent the cap system. In some cases that could be a benefit to collaboration, he said.

“I certainly don’t blame the ministry. The government has cut their operational funding and their science funding.”

New investment signals

The new system will be reviewed after a year, an online information session on 11 July was told.

In the session, officials from the ministry fielded questions from the sector. Alan Coulson, manager of contestable investments, agreed that the new round of Endeavour would be more focused on commercialisation of research.

“Clearly you’ll have seen the new investment signals. It does put more of a focus on commercialisation. That’s the focus that the incoming minister has wanted.”

Danette Olsen, the ministry’s general manager for science system investment and performance, said the impact of the caps on early career researchers would be assessed. “If there is significant drop-off and we have concerns about that, we always have the potential to add early career criteria.”

She said the assessment would also look at whether the caps on Smart Ideas grants push more applications into the fund’s Research Programmes stream. “We are aware that could be a potential consequence for setting a cap,” she said. A cap could also be brought in on Research Programmes, but there would be a consultation first.

Olsen said that a change in the wording around the application of the Vision Mātauranga policy, which encourages research that includes Māori knowledge, was “just editorial”.

“I don’t think there’s a shift away from [a focus on] people,” she said.

Baisden said that the sector saw the new wording as “falling back to the outdated 2008” policy, which would create pressure on researchers to engage in consultation that might be “neither useful nor properly supported financially”. This would have an impact on the Māori groups and researchers who were expected to take part.

Several questions in the session were about the fairness of the way caps were set and applied.

Coulson told the session that the cap allocations had been set by taking the average number of contracts won by an organisation over the past three years and applying an undisclosed “multiplier” to come up with a number. He said the formula would not be released because “we retain the right to change that year on year”.

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Australian researchers say international effort is needed to improve projections and decision-making

Small island states are poorly served by current climate change research because of inadequate data and models, Australian researchers have said.

A paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change on 10 July criticised the “coarse resolution” of most climate and mapping models. It called for “rapid global and regional cooperation to develop projections compatible with small island scales” and provide “relevant local information and decision-making tools”. It also said the international community should increase funding in this area.

The research was led by Jason Evans of the University of New South Wales. Evans is a member of both the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Weather of the 21st Century and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes. The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research also contributed.

Although small islands are “among the most vulnerable” to climate change, only sea level rises have been predicted “with high confidence”. Predictions for other hazards, such as “floods, landslides, drought, severe winds and fire weather” are less reliable because they are based on large-scale models. Some models in use lack the ability to even show very small islands, the researchers said.

Worldwide cooperation

High-resolution regional climate models, showing details down to one kilometre in size, need to be created to properly represent complex coastal environments, the group said.

In a statement on 10 July, the researchers added that “it will take worldwide cooperation, investment and innovation to achieve this goal, including the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to reduce computing costs”.

More cooperation between island states, research institutions and international organisations” is also needed.

“This could expand the role of the World Meteorological Organization Regional Climate Centres and requires capabilities similar to those available through [the EU Earth observation programme] Copernicus.”

Local researchers should be helped to attain “the knowledge and tools to participate in and contribute to the climate modelling and communication process, ensuring that projections are relevant and utilised in decision-making on the islands”, the group said.

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National grants programme run by Australian Research Council needs a full redesign, review told

The humanities should get a more “equitable” share of Australian research funding, the Australian Academy of the Humanities has said.

In its submission to the Australian Research Council’s review of its grants programme, the academy said “the ARC is the only source of government funding for basic research in the humanities and the primary source of industry-related collaborative funding”.

However, the “one-size-fits-all approach” taken in the council’s Discovery funding programme for fundamental research “has inflated the cost of humanities research while supporting a shrinking number of projects and individual researchers”.

The academy called for a total redesign of the council’s grants programme, saying it is “skewed” to favour “the sciences”.

It also said that “the expanded focus on the track record of the investigator is effectively shutting out early career researchers”.

Humanities, arts and social science researchers have a success rate of only 5 per cent in the ARC’s Laureate fellowships programme, the academy said, and the Centres of Excellence programme is weighted heavily against the humanities because of its “design, scale and assessment assumptions”.

Full range of research

Years of changes have created a set of funding schemes in need of a “first principles” review, the academy said. “The creation and dissemination of new knowledge has slipped off the policy agenda for research funding in recent years.”

Its submission criticised the focus on commercialisation of research, saying it would be more useful to focus on “the uses made” of new knowledge.

Any new scheme “must incorporate the necessary flexibility to include particular research practices across the full range of fields of research”.

“If the ARC wishes to support research in the humanities, it must do more to tailor its programmes in ways that acknowledge and facilitate excellent research in the humanities.”

A new scheme should work to reduce “unconscious bias” in assessment of grant applications, possibly by first assessing the projects “blind” before looking at the people and institutions involved, it said.

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This week: needs-based student funding, industry PhDs, travel grants, wheat production and a supercomputing deal

In depth: Small island states are poorly served by current climate change research because of inadequate data and models, Australian researchers have said.

Full story: Small islands ‘poorly served by current climate models’

Also this week from Research Professional News

ARC funding ‘skewed’ against humanities, academy says—National grants programme run by Australian Research Council needs a full redesign, review told

Horizon Europe: Australia’s ‘missed opportunity’?—Despite walking away from talks, hope remains for Australia to access EU research fund 

Australian medical research funders agree closer coordination—New committees and joint supervision introduced for medical research council and Medical Research Future Fund

Audit finds room for improvement in ARC’s credit card use—Australian Research Council accepts recommendations to tighten its policies and procedures

Here is the rest of the Australia news this week…

Needs-based student funding

The Australian government is consulting on a new funding system to support university students. In a consultation paper released on 12 July, the government says it will introduce “needs-based funding” for particular groups of students, with the money going to universities to provide support. The paper sets out key issues including which groups to support, how to allocate the money and how to assess the “academic preparedness” of students. Education minister Jason Clare said the new system would help Australia reach a target of 80 per cent of workers with a technical or university qualification by 2050 and break down the “invisible barrier” of disadvantage. Submissions to the consultation are due by 9 August.

Industry PhD winners announced

Postgraduate research to be funded in the third round of Australia’s Industry PhD programme includes work on IVF success rates, using artificial intelligence to improve mango harvesting and conserving a newly discovered mammal species. In an announcement on 12 July, assistant education minister Anthony Chisholm said that the 48 projects included “researchers from every Australian state and territory and a number of regional areas”. A total of A$7 million has been allocated. Applications for the fourth round are now open.

Academy offers travel grants

The Australian Academy of Science is offering travel grants to Australian early and mid-career researchers. Up to A$7,000 is available to support “travel to France and other countries in Europe, to work with leading researchers at major science and technology organisations for between 14 and 28 days”. Applications close on 9 September. 

Western Australia aims to boost wheat production

The Western Australian Agricultural Research Collaboration has said that a five-year investigation into nitrogen use in wheat will help boost production. The project, to be led by Murdoch University, will examine the impact of genetics on nitrogen use. Project leader Rajeev Varshney said: “By collaborating with leading institutions and industry partners, we are not only expanding our understanding of genetic regulation in wheat but also providing practical solutions and tools for breeders to develop improved wheat varieties.”

Supercomputer help for researchers

The Australian Research Data Commons has said that a deal with the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre will “create a more efficient research environment for Australian researchers”. A memorandum of understanding announced on 9 July will support future partnerships as Pawsey develops a replacement for its Nimbus system, which researchers use to analyse data. Pawsey is one of only two ‘tier one’ computing centres in Australia.

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Despite walking away from talks, hope remains for Australia to access EU research fund

Australia’s failure to take up access to one of the world’s largest research and innovation funding programmes has left many Australians scratching their heads.

The European Union’s seven-year Horizon Europe programme, which runs until 2027, is worth around A$150 billion. The EU allows countries outside the bloc to take part in its research and innovation programmes in exchange for a fee, but Horizon Europe is the first programme open to countries far beyond Europe’s borders.

In 2021, the EU opened association talks with Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand became associated in late 2022 and began receiving funding in 2023.

The Australian government’s decision to walk away from talks with the EU last year, revealed in June by Research Professional News, has left the country’s research leaders bemused and frustrated at a missed opportunity for access to research funds and closer links with Europe.

In June 2023, an Australian official wrote to the EU director-general for research and innovation, Marc Lemaître, telling him that Australia was not in a position to associate to Horizon Europe, citing funding reasons. The funding concerns are believed to be around the requirement that associating countries co-contribute to projects, but the government has not confirmed this.

Sector pressure

In a joint letter to Australian industry minister Ed Husic last October, four major interest groups—the Group of Eight representing Australia’s biggest research universities, the Australian Academy of Science, the Australian Industry Group and the European Australian Business Council—urged the minister to think again. It warned that the country was about to miss out on “arguably the world’s most significant research and innovation funding programme”.

Group of Eight chief executive Vicki Thomson says the letter pointed out that the changing geopolitical landscape meant that Australia should be pursuing research partnerships with “value-aligned, like-minded” nations.

Australian researchers can and do take part in some Horizon-funded projects as collaborators by bringing in their own funds, but association would open many more opportunities and allow Australian researchers to lead projects.

Chennupati Jagadish, the president of the Australian Academy of Science, said in a statement: “Australia’s association with Horizon Europe would also assist in mitigating some of the current geopolitical risk in Australia’s scientific enterprise; and deliver scientific and economic benefits to Australia.”

“The global challenges we are facing require global solutions, requiring researchers and countries to work together. International scientific collaboration is a matter of strategic national interest and something Australian cannot do without.”

European enthusiasm

Since New Zealand joined the programme, the EU has made association deals with Canada, South Korea and Morocco. Other non-EU research powerhouses are also involved. The UK joined the programme from the start of 2024 and talks are ongoing with Switzerland.

Australia is not the only country where talks have petered out: progress towards Japan becoming associated has also stalled. A European Union spokesperson said that after Australia withdrew from talks, the EU “remains fully available to continuing the discussion at the appropriate time”.

They added that Australian inclusion in the next EU R&I programme—currently known as Framework Programme 10 and due to commence in 2028—was still a possibility.

“The FP10 design is still very much in its initial reflective stage,” the spokesperson said.

The EU ambassador to Australia, Gabriele Visentin, spoke about the importance of the European-Australian research relationship in a Group of Eight video podcast in May.

Visentin, who was formerly the first-ever EU special envoy for the Indo-Pacific, said it was important to “demonstrate to [government] that this is not about handing money to the EU and it’s not about handing money to the Group of Eight”. Instead, the ambassador said joining Horizon Europe was about Australian universities, businesses and government working with European partners on issues such as climate change in the Indo-Pacific region.

“Of course there are costs involved, [but they] would not go to the EU, [they] would go to the Australian entities which participate, so it would not be a contribution to the EU budget, not at all. The contribution would be limited to the financing of the participation of the Australian entities,” he said.

The financial contribution of non-EU countries joining Horizon Europe is generally the most sensitive part of negotiations, but is proportionate to a country’s size and how much it is expected to participate in the programme.

Visentin also pointed out that access to Horizon Europe could play to Australia’s research strengths, such as cancer research. “We have the world’s biggest research fund on cancer [and] here you have centres of excellence, incredibly good centres of excellence in Australia. It would be good to join forces.”

Also speaking in the podcast, Thomson said that the Group of Eight was “very disappointed” at the lack of progress. “I think that puts us behind the eight-ball in building research partnerships with our like-minded, values-aligned partners.

“That alignment is built on a very strong foundation of decades and decades of partnership, so why wouldn’t we access that fund?”

New Zealand reaps rewards

When New Zealand associated, it only gained access to one of the three pillars of Horizon Europe. Pillar two supports collaborative research and innovation projects on predefined topics and is focused on “global challenges”. It is the most valuable of the three pillars, worth more than A$85bn.

When New Zealand joined, the government set up regional contact centres to help researchers propose projects and committed NZ$50m to the programme, although actual costs may vary depending on success.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment told RPN that of 31 formal proposals, eight had been successful so far. Another 30-plus are still being assessed. The New Zealand funding includes two University of Auckland projects: one on “virtual twins” in healthcare and another on cultural literacy in diverse populations.

When New Zealand joined, the New Zealand Association of Scientists said that although it was “good news”, it was “concerned” about the lack of access to pillar one, which includes support for bottom-up, investigator-led research including the prestigious European Research Council. The NZAS also wanted the country to join pillar three, which covers innovative technologies. The MBIE said that the European side “invited New Zealand to associate to pillar two, and this was the basis of our exploratory talks and negotiations”.

Loveday Kempthorne, MBIE manager of international science partnerships, said that while “we admire the programmes and initiatives supported under Horizon Europe’s pillars one and three…the driver for our association has been the collective desire to solve global challenges that is the focus of pillar two.

“We expect that as awareness and familiarity in the New Zealand research sector grows, our participation in aspects of Horizon Europe may also grow. Association to pillar two will allow us to build familiarity with Horizon Europe more generally,” she said.

While New Zealand builds familiarity, Australian researchers hoping to access Horizon’s funding and global links can only watch on. Industry minister Husic has yet to respond to the four peak bodies’ plea for a change of heart. His office did not respond to a request for comment.

But EU ambassador Visentin holds out hope for the future.

“I think that what the Group of Eight and what the business community are advocating for is really good, because we have to show the government that it’s not just the EU that would like to enlarge its associated countries, but it’s also the Australian stakeholders who have a keen interest,” he said.

He suggested there is still time for the Australian government to change course. “I consider [it] a low hanging fruit, rather than a missed opportunity.”

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Tips on partnership-building when time and budgetary pressures are paramount

Collaboration—and this is not a novel observation—is the lifeblood of science. And when scientists collaborate in pursuit of funding, their institutions will have to do so as well. Much has been written about how to make scientific partnerships work, but much of it fails to take into account the rushed and cash-strapped circumstances of most partnership-building exercises.

In this article, published in September 2018, Alison Lundbeck, research and innovation development manager at the University of Leeds, refers to the difficult contemporaneous context for universities and their researchers, but the picture she paints is remarkably similar to that existing now. Thanks to that, her six tips for practical partnership-building should still be relevant, too.

Recently in Funding Insight, Ross McLennan at the University of South Australia wrote about partnership building. He said it was essential that academics stop pushing their own agendas, listen actively to others and commit to making their partnerships work. This is certainly true, but this week I want to expand on these points and look at what we need to do in practice to make this happen.

Do more with less

We all know that UK research and higher education is continuing to change. There is austerity, the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, and changes to the Research Excellence Framework after Nicolas Stern’s review and Brexit. Many of these imply that we need to do more with less: there’s less funding available and more competition for it, and if successful there’s a demand for more auditable results. 

Expectations are growing, while confidence in the value of universities and research to society are at a low ebb.

The pressure is overwhelming, and it could be difficult for universities to deliver on all fronts. They must provide excellent teaching, world-leading research, societal impact, national productivity and more. They need cracking sustainable development and must deliver overseas development assistance. Value for money is important, as is interdisciplinarity for everything. We need to partner and collaborate to do bigger and better things that have practical outcomes, not just esoteric explorations that will sit on a shelf and gather dust.

Plus ça change

But so what? Is this really new? The mood music may have changed, but the fundamental purpose of a university hasn’t. The intrinsic value of research is the same as ever, and I think the values and motivations of researchers are too. Collaboration isn’t more important now; it’s just more lauded.

But isn’t it hard? Not really. Not if you want to do it. And I think most academics are intrinsically motivated to seek new knowledge, to quest and to make the world a better place. What better way to do that than by joining with other people? Inspiration doesn’t come by sitting alone in a room. The hardest problems probably won’t be solved by a lone genius. Others will have different perspectives, different skills and different experience that can help shine new light on an issue.

Collaboration in practice

So how do you go about it? There’s no single way, but there are certain things that can help.

1. Think about your motivation. What do you care about? What interests you about your research? What questions are you asking? What problems do you want to solve? Who could benefit from your research? You won’t be the only person in the world interested in these things. More importantly, you won’t have all the insight. Consider who else might be thinking about the same issues and start a conversation.
2. Don’t prejudge what you expect from a collaboration. Other perspectives, other tacit knowledge and other experience can bring insights you probably can’t conceive. You might have an ‘offer’. You might have an ‘ask’. But the best value isn’t transactional, it comes from open dialogue.
3. Pique the interest of others. That said, in starting a conversation don’t underestimate the value of “what’s in it for me?” Getting the ball rolling can be the biggest hurdle, and it’s important to pique the interest of a potential partner. If you’re making contact out of the blue (rather than, say, seeking an introduction from a mutual acquaintance or going to an open forum where attendees would expect to meet people around a shared issue), you can’t assume that other people have the same perspective on the situation, or will be able to see the possible value. Most people you might want to collaborate with don’t have the time to spend on something of no relevance.
4. Manage expectations and watch your language. Whether it’s a different discipline or a different sector, the acronyms and assumptions of a shared understanding of the same language can set your relationship back. Avoid (or at least explain) acronyms. Don’t get lost in irrelevant details. Even more of a pitfall is promising everything and delivering nothing. Set out early an understanding of how each partner works as much as possible, especially when working with those outside of universities. Timescales, processes, red tape, and even the type, scale or speed of deliverables expected can vary drastically between sectors. It’s important to tackle these types of issues upfront.
5. Build trust and collegiality. You might be an expert, but you don’t know everything. Develop a healthy respect for what colleagues can bring. Partners are your colleagues too. You’re coming together for mutual benefit, not because you have to, so make the effort.
6. If you have to negotiate, be as open as possible. It all comes back to trust, and understanding each other’s worlds. Can’t get authorisation yesterday? A certain cost isn’t eligible under a particular research funder? Need deliverable A, as well as pragmatic outcome B? Explain. Don’t assume your potential partners understand your sticking points. A fixed position can be misinterpreted as a strength in negotiation, but this isn’t a game of chicken. Leaving no room for manoeuvre has the potential to sink any collaboration. And you can’t be sure you’re not undermining the chance of an innovative solution. The underlying reason why a particular outcome is needed might not be the same as the thing itself: there could be a better outcome for all concerned. 

Is it worth it?

So is it all worth it? Hopefully, yes. We’re all pressured for time, but a stimulating conversation about an issue you’re passionate about can do the world of good for your motivation and enthusiasm back in the day job. Many hands can make light work when you’re trying to solve a complex challenge. In fact, many hands can make the work possible.

Reality is complex at the best of times: we’re all partial, subjective and limited in our own individual understanding. Take every opportunity you can to get a better view of the world, of the challenge you’re trying to tackle. You can’t understand the context, or how possible solutions may sink or swim in practice, without seeking the views of others.

Value the working relationships you already have, but don’t shut off from new opportunities. At worst, you might gain some valuable experience. At best, you might kick-start a brilliantly productive partnership and do some good in the world. Cross-disciplinary and cross-sectoral partnerships really are the key to meeting the big, global, integrated problems the world is facing. If a problem isn’t small, neat and standalone, it can’t be solved by a lone person. And aren’t those the sort of problems we really need to solve?

The post From the archive: Six practical steps for successful partnerships appeared first on Research Professional News.

This week: researcher wins damages, new Royal Society president starts, Covid inquiry expands, and more

In depth: A review of New Zealand’s university system has turned its attention to research, teaching and governance issues.

Full story: Review queries foundations of higher education system

Also this week from Research Professional News

Applications to Smart Ideas funding scheme capped—New Zealand government limits number of applications to Endeavour Fund scheme and cuts total funding 

Here is the rest of the New Zealand news this week…

Researcher awarded damages

New Zealand’s Employment Court has ordered the University of Auckland to pay microbiologist and science communicator Siouxsie Wiles NZ$20,000 in general damages for breaching its contractual obligations to protect her health and safety. Wiles brought a case alleging that the university had failed to protect her from public harassment in the course of her work, particularly around the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, on which she was a prominent commentator and the face of a public health campaign. Wiles said she suffered threats and was not sufficiently supported. The university said in a statement that a ruling stating that there was no suppression of academic freedom meant the decision would be “well received” by universities. Wiles said she felt “vindicated” by the findings. “Harassment of academics and experts is a longstanding and worldwide phenomenon,” she said, adding that organisations “must be prepared and have policies and practices to support, protect and care for workers”.

Health Research Council divides up NZ$50m

The Health Research Council has allocated NZ$50 million to 26 projects, including a joint three-year University of Auckland and Auckland City Hospital study of ways to include geographically diverse patients in clinical trials, which will receive $NZ1.2m. Other projects include a four-year University of Otago lung cancer screening study, which will receive NZ$5m; a NZ$5m five-year Medical Research Institute of New Zealand project investigating treatments for pneumonia, influenza and pandemic infections; and a NZ$5m study of the lives of young Pasifika people living in New Zealand, carried out at the Auckland University of Technology.

Harding handed baton at Royal Society

Jane Harding has taken over the presidency of the Royal Society of New Zealand for a three-year term, replacing outgoing president Brent Clothier on 1 July. Harding, who specialises in perinatal research and neonatology, is a holder of the Rutherford Medal and the Prime Minister’s Science Prize. She is New Zealand’s secretary for the Rhodes Scholarships. In a statement, she said: “My entire career has been dedicated to the pursuit and sharing of knowledge, to supporting a diverse research ecosystem, and to the recognition of excellent research. I am deeply committed to ensuring that Royal Society Te Apārangi continues to deliver on that core mission, as a fundamental underpinning of civil society.”

Japanese collaboration grants announced

New Zealand researchers in disaster mitigation, response and recovery will be able to apply for funding for joint research projects with Japanese counterparts. In a 4 July announcement, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and the Japan Science and Technology Agency said they would each fund the teams in their respective countries. Up to NZ$300,000 for each of three New Zealand teams, working over three years, will be available. A call for proposals will be issued via New Zealand’s Catalyst fund in the next few weeks.

Covid inquiry expands

New terms of reference for New Zealand’s Covid-19 inquiry will include the rollout and safety of vaccines. The inquiry’s commissioners said in a 5 July statement that the wider scope was “a useful addition”. The inquiry’s reporting date for its first phase has been extended by two months, to 28 November.

The post New Zealand news roundup: 27 June to 10 July appeared first on Research Professional News.

University Advisory Group wants to hear how New Zealand universities’ “core activities” could be improved

A review of New Zealand’s university system has turned its attention to research, teaching and governance issues.

In a statement on 8 July, the University Advisory Group, which is carrying out the review, said it wants to hear how universities’ “core activities” could be improved.

Government oversight of university research is also on the table in the second round of consultations for the review, after submissions to the previous round revealed deep concern about funding within the sector, and differences between universities and other research agencies on the role of universities in carrying out research.

New questions posed

The group has now asked stakeholders whether the current governance structure is “optimal”, with the Ministry of Education funding universities but the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment setting science and innovation goals and funding.

It also issued questions around quality assurance in universities, the provision of qualifications by universities, the range of disciplines offered, staffing and management.

The group asked what scale and mixture of international fee-paying students would be appropriate for the university system, and for ideas on how to promote excellence in teaching, research and knowledge transfer.

It also raised questions about how to decide which disciplines should be taught and how the system could best respond to the demand for transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary research and graduates.

Staffing questions cover retention, how to foster early career researchers, and whether universities are “appropriately setting the proportions of teaching, research and administrative staff and the mix of those on long-term and short-term employment contracts”.

More rounds to come?

The advisory group is due to give advice to education minister Penny Simmonds in August, with a final report due in February 2025.

The current consultation closes on 8 August, and the group’s statement said there would be “several rounds” in total.

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Australian Research Council accepts recommendations to tighten its policies and procedures

The Australian Research Council has been told by auditors to improve its processes around the use of corporate credit cards.

In an audit report published on 27 June, the Australian National Audit Office said that the ARC should consider updating its policies and procedures. It found that the council needs better “detective” procedures to catch patterns of misuse.

About 30 per cent of ARC staff have access to a corporate card. The report says that total spending using the cards nearly doubled over the two-year audit period, from A$227,000 in 2021-22 to A$412,000 in 2022-23. This is attributed to lower spending in the first year because of the pandemic.

The largest spend on ARC credit cards was at Canberra Airport, at just over A$50,000 over the two years. The council leases its premises from the airport, and much of the spending was related to parking and venue hire.

The audit concluded that the ARC’s management of card use was “largely effective” but that “better implementation of preventive and detective controls could improve the ARC’s assurance over its corporate credit card use”. 

The council was also found to lack a system to deal with any “repeated instances of non-compliance” regarding card use.

Reporting discrepancies

While the ARC reported only 10 instances of non-compliance with its policies over the two years, the audit found 83 examples. 

The ARC’s internal reporting, provided to Parliament, found four “incidents” that included personal misuse and the purchasing of phones and headsets without approval. The “personal misuses” were two transactions under A$100, which had been repaid. About A$6,000 had been spent “contrary to policy” each year.

There was room for improvement in documentation of policies and improvements, and some risk-management controls were untested, the audit found. The ARC also failed to give accurate responses to parliamentary questions on card use.

“There is no process in place to periodically review cardholders with monthly credit limits above the policy-defined limits,” according to the audit report. In some cases, supporting evidence for card spending was not “consistently provided” to the ARC’s internal checking team.

The report also recommended that the ARC “consider reviewing its current process for tracking travel approval to ensure consistency with the (wider government) travel policy”.

Recommendations accepted

In a response to the audit, the ARC agreed to all of the findings and promised to implement all of the recommendations. The audit team noted that the ARC said it had made several improvements to card use policies in late 2023, while the audit was being completed, including checking that cards could not be used for cash advances.

An ARC spokesperson told Research Professional News that the report “found the ARC is effective overall in managing the use of corporate credit cards and made three practical recommendations for improvements which the ARC welcomed and is implementing”.

The audit was carried out as part of a routine series.

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New committees and joint supervision introduced for medical research council and Medical Research Future Fund

Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council and the country’s Medical Research Future Fund are creating a new structure aimed at better coordinating their research funding.

In an announcement on 5 July, the MRFF said that it had “joined with the NHRMC to strengthen Australia’s world-leading research capability under a new structure”.

An NHMRC spokesperson said this involved creating a joint steering committee in addition to new joint advisory committees.

The NHMRC’s existing Research Committee, which advises on funding policy and awards grants, will now also advise on “MRFF matters and policy”, while its Australian Health Ethics Committee will continue as an NHMRC-only committee.

Both top-level committees were set for the appointment of new members at the end of June due to the end of the last members’ three-year term.

Four other committees will form part of the joint arrangements. They are:

• The NHMRC-MRFF Consumer Advisory Group, to advise on “consumer and community involvement in health and medical research”.

• The NHMRC-MRFF Industry, Philanthropy and Commercialisation Committee, to advise on “industry and philanthropic involvement in health and medical research and strategies to foster greater research commercialisation”.

• The NHMRC-MRFF Public Health and Health Systems Committee, to look at issues of healthcare delivery and research translation in the health system.

• The NHMRC-MRFF Indigenous Advisory Group, to “advise on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health research and capacity building for Indigenous health researchers”.

Move follows consultation

The new coordination of the MRFF and NHMRC follows a 2023 consultation on options to bring the operations of the funders closer together, which included the option of a full merger. Between them, the funders distribute around A$1.55 billion a year for research.

Although the government has not yet released its formal response to the consultation, the new structure has been seen as a de facto response. In May, minister for health Mark Butler also promised to create a national health and medical research funding strategy by next year. Research Professional News asked Butler for comment.

The Association of Australian Medical Research Institutes welcomed the announcement. Chief executive Saraid Billiards said the move was “another step forward in creating a cohesive and strategic approach to how medical research is supported and carried out in Australia” after a previous lack of “national coordination”.

“Better-aligned funding will mean reduced grant duplication and administrative burden, as well as more sustainable and rewarding careers for our talented researchers,” she said.

Working on improving alignment

There has been no detail released about any administrative mergers or changes to the reporting responsibilities of the MRFF. The NHMRC administers the Medical Research Endowment Account as a statutory authority, while the MRFF is overseen by the Department of Health.

An NHMRC spokesperson told Research Professional News: “In addition to the establishment of new joint NHMRC-MRFF advisory committees, the NHMRC and the Health and Medical Research Office are already working together on improving alignment, through collaborative mapping of MRFF and NHMRC funding, and policy activities to streamline our processes.”

“This is being driven by working groups comprising NHMRC and departmental staff, and overseen by a joint senior executive steering committee,” they added.

Nominations to join the six committees close on 31 July.

The post Australian medical research funders agree closer coordination appeared first on Research Professional News.

This week: AI involvement, Australia-India research, citizen science and health research funding

In depth: Business leaders and government agencies have swung behind the university-led campaign to stop the government imposing cuts on Australia’s international student intake.

Full story: Opposition to student caps builds

Also this week from Research Professional News

Australia’s chief scientist stepping down—Search underway for science leader to replace Cathy Foley

Here is the rest of the Australia news this week…

Libraries call for AI help

The Australian Library and Information Association has told a Senate inquiry that there should be “more support for libraries to ensure that people are not left behind in the artificial intelligence revolution”. In its submission to the Select Committee on Adopting Artificial Intelligence, the association wrote that there were “positive steps that libraries, with government assistance, can take” to ensure Australians’ involvement in AI developments. It said that “AI inclusion” could be achieved by providing computing and internet facilities, and by fostering AI literacy throughout education.

Australia-India research funding recipients announced

Five projects will receive A$3.8 million of support in the latest round of the Australia-India Strategic Research Fund. The joint projects from five Australian universities, each with an Indian research partner, will work on soil health, the use of nanomaterials to clean up water, the recycling of mobile devices, the development of antimicrobial treatments, and new diagnostics for bacterial infections. Industry minister Ed Husic said the programme had so far backed 360 projects over its 18 years of funding.

Citizen science fights invasions

A study from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation has found that so-called “citizen science” may help alert researchers to invasive species. A 12-month trial used an email alert system linked to the Atlas of Living Australia to record sightings of invasive species. The researchers concluded that “the advancement of citizen science is interconnected with the advancement of research infrastructure and will ultimately lead to greater scientific and management value of citizen-science data”.

Health research grants invested in digital initiatives

An A$19.75 million injection of funds will go to developing digital products based on Australian health research. In an announcement on 1 July, health minister Mark Butler said six companies would be funded through the Medical Research Future Fund’s ANDHealth+ programme, each receiving A$3.75m. One of the recipients is the Sydney Neuroimaging Analysis Centre, which is developing artificial intelligence-based tools to help treat neurological diseases.

The post Australia news roundup: 25 June to 8 July appeared first on Research Professional News.