Tag Archives: Turkey

Funding: Opportunities in Turkey

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The Turkish government is heavily investing in its science and research, partnering with international groups to create funding opportunities for scientists.

Contributor Diana Cai

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The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) is on a mission to recruit talented scientists around the world and reverse the “brain drain,” or the emigration of well-educated people to other countries. Since the mid-1960s, after Turkey experienced its first military coup d’état in 1960, talented researchers have fled the country in search for more security and better opportunities. Over the past decade, the Turkish government has become vigilant of the trend, increasing research funds to help address the problem.

According to a press release issued by the Turkish Statistical Institute in November 2014, research and development expenditures grew from 0.48% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2003 to 0.95% in 2013. In 2013, the GDP of Turkey was $822.1 billion, with an average annual inflation-adjusted growth rate of 4.9% from 2003-2013. As a result, Turkey hopes to position itself as an attractive option for both Turkish nationals and foreign citizens wishing to conduct cutting-edge research. Continue reading →

Would you return to your home country to set up a lab?

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Last week EMBO announced the recipients of its 2011 Installation Grants – a round of funding that supports scientists who want to relocate to a country that is currently building its fundamental research capacity. The 2011 grants, which comprise an annual award of 50,000 euros for three to five years, will enable seven scientists to set up laboratories in the Czech Republic, Poland, Estonia and Turkey.

One of the recipients, Nurhan Özlü, has returned to her home country of Turkey after spending ten years in the United States. In an EMBO podcast, she says that for a junior group leader, establishing a lab in a country that’s growing its scientific capacity has several benefits, but she also has to adapt to a developing research infrastructure. “[In the United States] all the facilities, resources and services were available and if I purchased something it arrived the next day,” she says. “[In Turkey] experiments take a lot more effort and time.”

In a Nature Careers article on the topic from 2009, the head of a lab in the Czech Republic said that while the research infrastructure was comparable to Germany and the United States, it was necessary to assemble attractive salaries from several sources of funding.

Would you trade a scientific powerhouse such as the United States for a country with a less-developed research infrastructure if it meant you could set up your own lab? Have you already done so and thrived on the opportunity? Let us know your thoughts and experiences. The next application deadline for EMBO Installation Grants is 15 April 2012.

‘Brain circulation’ and other trends in global science

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Forget ‘brain drain’ – many countries are now focusing their efforts on making the most of ‘brain circulation’, according to a new report on global science from the Royal Society, Britain’s national academy of science.

In a shift away from attempting to stem the flow of talented scientists overseas, countries such as China and India are setting aside resources to attract native scientists back home later in their careers while maintaining their links with host countries.

Many nomadic scientists who remain overseas are also keen to maintain links with their home countries but are unsure where to start, making them an “untapped resource” for international collaboration, according to the report, Knowledge, Networks and Nations: Global Scientific Collaboration in the 21st Century.

Where brain drain is still a major problem, such as in Africa, governments need to reward talented scientists and enable them to foster global networks while ensuring they also help build national research capacity.

Other highlights of the report include:

• International collaboration is growing, and has a significant effect on a research paper’s impact (see ‘Research sans frontières’ for more)

• In addition to the meteoric rise of China and, to a lesser extent, Brazil and India, other rapidly emerging scientific nations include Turkey, Iran and Tunisia

• R&D investment in developing countries is increasing: the share of foreign-owned business R&D in the developing world grew from 2% in 1996 to 18% in 2002

• Regions and cities are displacing countries as the relevant unit when discussing R&D – in the United States, the state of California accounted for more than one-fifth of national R&D spending in 2004, while Moscow accounts for 50% of Russian research articles

• Many established research centres and funders have become global brands that are no longer necessarily confined to their geographic location – the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom has a campus in China, for example, while the UK-based Wellcome Trust helps fund institutes in Asia and Africa

What’s your reaction to the report? If you’re a scientist working overseas, do you plan to return home later in your career? Are you seeing the benefits of international collaboration? Share your thoughts below.