Category Archives: Institutions

Institutions

Two scientists to join Italian senate

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Carlo Rubbia

Nobel-laureate physicist Carlo Rubbia was appointed to the Italian senate together with stem-cell scientist Elena Cattaneo.
MARKUS PÖSSEL/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Posted on behalf of Nicola Nosengo.

Two scientists are among the four new senators for life appointed today by Italy’s president, Giorgio Napolitano. Particle physicist and Nobel Prize winner Carlo Rubbia and stem-cell specialist Elena Cattaneo will become permanent members of the Italian Senate, along with the orchestra conductor Claudio Abbado and the architect Renzo Piano, whose appointments were also announced today.

Born in 1934, Rubbia is one of Italy’s most famous and respected living scientists. He spent most of his career at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, where he also served as director general between 1989 and 1993. In 1984 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics together with Simon Van deer Meer for the discovery of the W and Z bosons, the particles responsible for the weak interaction, one of the four fundamental forces in nature.

The appointment of Elena Cattaneo is possibly more surprising. Cattaneo, who heads the Laboratory for Stem Cell Biology and Pharmacology of Neurodegenerative Diseases at the University of Milan, is a leading expert in her field, and only a few weeks ago became a member of the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome, Italy’s national academy. But outside the scientific community she is nowhere near as famous as Rubbia (let alone Piano or Abbado), and at 51 she is much younger than the average senator-for-life. In his official statement, Napolitano said that he wanted to appoint “a female scientist who is still young but has already achieved a lot” and that “choosing her is meant as an appreciation and an encouragement for many Italians of the new generations who commit themselves, amid difficulties, to scientific research”.

In the last few months Cattaneo has often taken strong public positions against the “Stamina” method, a controversial stem-cell therapy which most scientists consider unproved, but for which parliament has agreed to fund a trial (see ‘Italian stem-cell trial based on flawed data‘ and ‘Stem-cell ruling riles researchers‘). Napolitano made no reference to the controversy, but Cattaneo’s role in it may have helped her cause.

The appointments are a welcome surprise for Italian scientists, who are having had a hard time trying to make their voice heard in the capital and for instance have complained about restrictive regulation on animal research that were passed recently into law. Cattaneo and Rubbia will now have the same voting rights as elected senators — but for the rest of their lives. Their votes could be significant in a country where governments often survive on thin majorities: the late neuroscientist Rita Levi-Montalcini in 2006 threatened to vote against Romano Prodi’s government – kept alive by a handful of votes — unless he withdrew a plan to cut the budget for scientific research. It worked.

Italy’s constitution gives the president the power to appoint up to five senators for life during his mandate, for “high merits in the social, scientific, artistic and literary fields”. Since 1948 – when Italy become a Republic – presidents have appointed mostly former politicians and civil servants, with the addition of the occasional artist, writer or entrepreneur. Only two scientists had previously received the honour: mathematician Guido Castelnuovo in 1949 and Levi-Montalcini in 2001. The recent deaths of Montalcini, who passed away at the age of 103, and of three  other senators for life had left four empty seats, which Napolitano has now filled.

Cabinet reshuffle shakes up Canadian science

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Posted on behalf of Hannah Hoag.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has appointed former nurse and lawyer Greg Rickford as Canada’s science and technology minister.

Rickford most recently served as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. He has been relatively quiet about science since his election in 2008, but has faced some of the current unrest in the Canadian research community.

Rickford represents the electoral district of Kenora, which includes the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA), the freshwater research station that the federal government stopped funding on 31 March. In May, Rickford announced in parliament that federal government and the Winnipeg-based International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) had signed a memorandum of agreement to set up the transfer the ELA to the IISD.

In his new job, Rickford will report to parliament through Industry Canada and its new minister, James Moore. The department oversees the activities and budgets of most of Canada’s science agencies, including the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council, the Canadian Space Agency (which faces steep budget cuts over the coming years) and the newly revamped National Research Council of Canada. Genome Canada and the Canadian Foundation for Innovation also fall under the Industry portfolio.

Paul Dufour, a science-policy analyst at the University of Ottawa, told The Globe and Mail that Rickford — and Moore — have limited experience with science and technology issues.

Rickford also inherits a disappointing report on Canada’s performance on science, technology, and innovation performance, which called the country’s capabilities “mid-level” and criticized Canada for “treading water” as it dropped from 16th to 23rd among industrialized nations in overall spending on research and development relative to GDP.

The cabinet shuffle replaced other notable science ministers. Leona Aglukkaq swaps her health post for the environment portfolio, replacing environment minister Peter Kent, and takes on the responsibility of finalizing federal regulations on greenhouse-gas emissions in the oil and gas sector. Gail Shea relieves Federal Fisheries Minister Keith Ashfield from his job, and Rona Ambrose was sworn in as Minister of Health, a position that oversees the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the federal agency funding health research.

Cutbacks kick off kerfuffle over Spanish-German observatory

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Spain’s National Research Council (CSIC) and Germany’s Max Planck Society agreed late last month to major budget cuts at the Hispano-German Astronomical Observatory at Calar Alto, Spain.

The new contract cuts the observatory’s 2014-2018 budget from 2010 forecasts (PDF, in Spanish) of more than €3.2 million per year to €1.6 million per year (PDF, in Spanish and English). Then the Max Planck Society, which has contributed nearly two-thirds of the observatory’s budget since 1979 in return for 50% of the facility’s observing time, will leave the joint venture. The decision to drop out is not new; it was part of a 2010 agreement and is part of a shift toward new observatories with different capabilities.

The observatory will start cutting staff this month, and beginning in 2014 it will operate only one of its three instruments, its 3.5-metre telescope. Its remaining 2.2-metre and 1.23-metre telescopes will be available to research teams with the funds to operate them.

“All the medium-size observatories are going through such exercises,” says astronomer Hans-Walter Rix, director of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, the German operating partner of the observatory. In their prime, 2- to 4-metre telescopes such as those at Palomar in California, La Silla in Chile and Kitt Peak in Arizona drew many researchers, but a proliferation of larger telescopes in locations with better observing conditions has changed astronomers’ priorities.

Now top astronomy teams fight for a few nights a year at 8- and 10-metre terrestrial telescopes or even orbiting telescopes. That has freed older medium-size telescopes for longer observing runs.

Calar Alto will fit its 3.5-metre telescope with a new spectrograph and embark on a time-intensive survey for Earth-like planets that would have been difficult or impossible when the telescope was shared by many projects. A European astronomy network, ASTRONET, called the observatory “globally unique” thanks in part to its suite of instruments (PDF, in English).

The cuts have sparked complaints in the Spanish astronomy community. The Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia, the Spanish operating partner, accused CSIC, which is its parent body, of neglecting scientific criteria in its decision (in Spanish). The Spanish Astronomy Society also notes that despite government promises to consult a scientific panel the CSIC told Spanish astronomers of the budget cut in late May, ahead of a national astronomy commission meeting (in Spanish).

A CSIC spokesperson told Nature that the CSIC held several public meetings where community members and other institutions offered their opinions, but no funding. The observatory’s new director will seek new financial partners to give the observatory continuity after the German departure, the spokesperson says.

Rix says, “there is a bright future for such telescopes” but acknowledges that the Calar Alto budget cuts will mean “probably there will be some less redundancy, reliability, less observing comfort for the users.”

Iron man elected new Max Planck president

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Martin Stratmann, a director at the Max Planck Institute for Iron Research in Düsseldorf, Germany, will take the chair next year of that country’s largest non-university basic-research organization.

Martin Stratmann will become the head of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in June 2014.

Martin Stratmann will become the head of the Max Planck Society in June 2014. {credit}MPS/Axel Griesch{/credit}

The Max Planck Society (MPS), which runs 80 research institutes in Germany and 13 centres and partner institutes abroad, elected Stratmann as new president at its annual assembly this week in Potsdam. The 59-year-old chemist and materials researcher will take office in June next year, succeeding developmental biologist Peter Gruss, who has been at the helm of the society since 2002.

Stratmann, has been involved with the MPS for more than 30 years. Since 2000, he has been in charge of the department for Interface Chemistry and Surface Engineering at the Institute for Iron Research, a public–private partnership between the MPS and the German Steel Institute. From 2006 to 2008, he was chairman of the MPS’s section for Chemistry, Physics and Technology. Since 2008, the expert in corrosion has been a vice-president of the society.

The Max Planck Society’s annual budget of around €2.0 billion (US$2.6 billion) is jointly financed by the federal government and Germany’s 16 state governments. Since its post-war foundation in 1948, the MPS has produced 17 Nobel prizewinners.

Marine Biological Laboratory votes to align with University of Chicago

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Members of the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), a venerable but financially strapped research institute in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, voted 158 to 2 today in favour of an alliance with the University of Chicago, in Illinois.

The proposed affiliation, if approved, would shift control of the MBL to the University of Chicago.

A view of the MBL across Eel Pond FLICKR/Vince Smith

A view of the MBL across Eel Pond {credit}FLICKR/Vince Smith{/credit}

But the alignment gained widespread support as a way to brighten the 125-year-old institution’s financial outlook as well as solidify its scientific connections.

“The institution has had longstanding ties with the University,” says MBL senior scientist Jonathan Gitlin. He notes that the MBL’s  first two directors, Charles O. Whitman and Frank Lillie, were both faculty members at the University of Chicago. He described the atmosphere at the 1 June vote as jubilant, and says that the partnership “will lead to another great step in the future of the institution”.

MBL president and director Joan Ruderman proposed the affiliation last December after facing losses in contributions and investment earning, financial hardships shared by many private labs. Since 2009, the institute’s annual revenue has dropped by more than US$8 million, leaving it with $41 million in income in 2012. Meanwhile, the costs to run the lab, which employs 270 scientists and staff and hosts more than 300 visiting scholars each year, have increased. The institute’s expenses overshot its income by nearly $6 million last year.

“This affiliation is definitely intended to improve this [financial] situation,” says corporation member Garland Allen, a biologist at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri.

In a 28 January letter to the MBL community, Ruderman described the affiliation as a way to “create an improved financial foundation that will enable the MBL to meet the demands of modern science and current funding realities”.

For its part, the University of Chicago aims to use the connection to bolster its research in marine biology and conservation. In a 24 May letter to the MBL community, Neil Shubin, associate dean for academic strategy at the university, wrote that these “fields are not among the University’s existing strengths”. He went on to write that the university supported the affiliation because they “believe in the fundamental intellectual model of the MBL, despite the challenging financial environment”.

The decision to finalize the affiliation now moves to the board of trustees at each institution, both of which declined to provide a timeline for a decision, citing further negotiations.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this blog post suggested that the MBL is controlled by its corporation members when in fact it is governed by its board of trustees.

Chinese academy gets second chance to elect eminent biologist

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Posted on behalf of Jane Qiu.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) on 20 May announced the list of candidates for the biennial selection of its prestigious membership. None is attracting more intense speculation than Shi Yigoing, dean of the School of Life Sciences at Tsinghua University in Beijing, who applied for the membership unsuccessfully two years ago.

The speculation is partly fuelled by the US National Academy of Sciences’ announcement last month that it awarded membership to Shi, whose specialty is protein crystallography, for his “distinguished and continuing achievements in original research”. This has renewed a heated debate in the Chinese press and blogosphere on the criteria and selection process of Chinese academies.

In 2008, Shi gave up his professorship at Princeton University in New Jersey to take up the position as at Tsinghua. Since his return he has published a total of 12 papers in the journals Nature, Science and Cell, and more in other journals.

The main reason for the CAS 2011 decision to reject Shi’s membership application, according to Muming Poo, director of the CAS Institute of Neuroscience in Shanghai, was that candidates must make a significant contribution to China in addition to academic accomplishment. “Since Shi hadn’t been back for long, he didn’t score high in this regard,” he says.

But that might not be the whole story: Shi is also an outspoken critic of China’s science culture and institutions and a driving force of reforms, and his outspokenness has earned him enemies. In 2010, he and Rao Yi, a biologist at Peking University, wrote a fierce critique of China’s research culture and funding system in Science.

In a blog post in 2011 in response to the selection decision against Shi and other outstanding scientists, Rao wrote that the outcome is indicative of the predicament faced by many high-flying returnees from abroad. “They are perceived as threats and rejected by the scientific establishment in China,” he wrote.

The CAS congratulated Shi for his induction into its US counterpart but told Xinhua, China’s state news agency, that the two academies are independent organizations with different criteria for membership.

Critics say, however, that the incident should trigger a rethinking on whether the selection process is fair or truly rewards academic excellence. An online commentator going by the name Dmlprince wrote that it’s tragic to see scientists much less accomplished than Shi get selected as members. Another, named Qiudy, wrote that the membership system needs to be reformed for China to attract distinctive scientists from overseas.