chris horn's blog

On the morning that today's Irish Times announced that our health service minister is seeking a further 900Meuro reduction in the 14,000Meuro health budget, our deputy prime minster ("Tanaiste") Mary Coghlan announced a further 45Meuro investment in three large national science research centres.

I'm waiting for the reaction from certain public chat-show hosts on our national media: "how is it morally justifiable to spend 45Meuro when it would appear that the crisis in our accident and emergency units in our hospitals is about to severely deepen ?"

Let's see. 45Meuro would buy 560 return flights to Florida on the Government Gulfstream for the Minister of Health and her colleagues; or almost 5,000 return first class transatlantic airtrips for the CEO of a major Irish agency - funded by the taxpayer; or over a 1,000,000 pay-per-view private in-hotel movies for the executives of a major Irish agency - funded by the taxpayer; or 90,000 gifts (glass barometers) for a serving senior Minister - from taxpayers funds. And, as an afterthought perhaps, the investment is worth 228,000 attendances at accident and emergency units in Irish hospitals; or 69,000 in-patient bed days at Irish hospitals; or about just 35% of the cost of a failed and written-off national payroll system for our health service.

The 45Meuro invested today in world class scientific research is a serious moral choice. We can invest in science, or we can partially reduce cut backs in our public services. The consequential responsibility on our science research leaders is onerous. The three centres receiving funding today have already demonstrated impactful advances not just on the standard of scientific research in Ireland, but also to the potential economic and social benefits to Ireland - and indeed humanity at large.

Dr Fergus Shanahan's APC team have already produced world class leadership in the understanding, and the consequential application of, of the complex microbiology and pharmabiotics of the human intestine. The global benefits of pro-biotic food additives are largely due to their outstanding work.

One of the potential benefits of nanotechnology research is the highly targetted delivery of drug payloads to any specific part of the body. Today's delivery of drugs in the human body is akin to the military carpet bombing of world war two: one can appreciate the benefits if we could deliver drugs within the body as clinically as today's military smart weapon delivery systems. The CRANN team, hosted at TCD by John Boland, have much opportunity here and it is perhaps surprising that SFI have apparently not yet focussed more on the biomedical opportunities of nanotechnology research.

Dr Stefan Decker and his team at the DERI project (disclosure: I am on the technical advisory board) in Galway are focussed on enabling computers to really understand the deep complexity of human languages and nuances. If computers can learn to understand the semantics of human communication, then one of the many outcomes can be not just better web search engines, but better web based harmonisation engines which can reconcile what you already know with what you might not know. The opportunities to advance human understanding - by leveraging what is already known by across both today's, but also yesterday's, humanity, rather than forgetting or re-discovering what is in fact already known elsewhere or previously in history - are breathtaking.

But there are also other major centres in Ireland. Declaring a personal interest as the Chair of its governance board, the CTVR centre is globally unique in exploiting a great untapped natural resource, which we are extremely fortunate to have here in Ireland: the airwaves - the 'electro-magnetic spectrum' - which are unsaturated in Ireland, and thus a wonderful opportunity for very advanced new communication technologies. The BDI centre is researching very rapid diagnosis and self-test of medical conditions by non-invasive (e.g. saliva, sweat, blood pinpricks) sampling. The REMEDI centre is researching advanced stem cell research from adult humans.

All of this research, conducted in Ireland, is incredibly impressive. Furthermore, Irish scientific diaspora have returned, and Ireland is acting as a magnet for other nationals to undertake world class research here. The quality, and quantity, of high profile, globally widely-cited scientific papers, and of patents, has increased dramatically.

For me, one of the most exciting consequences has been the proliferation of cross-disciplinary and inter-institutional research amongst our young researchers and principal investigators, despite perhaps our long standing traditional hostility and open competition that all too often has hitherto corrupted some of the more established and senior talent in our universities (as I wrote here). There are clear opportunities for further collaboration between the universities in Ireland supported at the highest level.

But I remain concerned.

I remain concerned, because in my own view, the Irish state agencies - and in particular Science Foundation Ireland - have insufficiently focussed on the opportunity to translate world class research undertaken in Ireland into innovative products and services for the global market. In my view, Science Foundation Ireland is myopically focussed on Science: but what we also need - perhaps need even more - is a focus on Engineering. Ireland needs to take the most interesting scientific results globally available to engineer innovative new products and services for the world market.

I was surprised and concerned, for example, to learn that SFI reputedly believes that the work at REMEDI is overly focussed on commercial exploitation and industry linkage, rather than as SFI reputedly believes what is more nationally strategic basic research: this seems to me to in fact be the antithesis of what the small open Irish economy, with limited financial resources by global standards, actually needs. I am surprised and disappointed, that SFI does not have, and a senior executive has actually told me that it does not see the need for, a national showcase or centre for the outstanding scientific results which its sponsored researchers have already produced, and which are available for uptake by national and multi-national industry at large. I am surprised and disappointed that SFI sees no role in outreach to the Irish public to explain the importance of science in incidents like last week's national dioxin crisis, through a vehicle such as the Science Gallery (again a disclosure: for which I am chair). I am surprised and disappointed that SFI seems to think it can be just a shipyard launching ships, rather than an admiral not only building ships, but leading a complementary and mutually re-enforcing cohesive fleet to take on the world.

45Meuro is a lot of accident and emergency bed spaces. I absolutely know that the research teams receiving this funding feel the awesome national responsibility of the Irish taxpayer watching over them. But I am concerned that SFI is currently missing a much bigger picture than it currently seems able to see.

A couple of weeks ago, I gave a keynote address at a Science Foundation Ireland seminar in UCC. A few people have asked me to post a copy on my blog, so with apologies to those of you uninterested in Irish science policy who may want to skip this blog entry, here it is.

The event was a public presentation by all seven Centres for Science and Engineering Technology, to the general public and media. Minister Michael Martin attended. The seven CSETs are:

· Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre (APC) led by Prof. Fergus Shanahan, and researching gastro-intestinal health

· Biomedical Diagnositics Institute (BDI), led by Prof. Brian MacCraith, and researching early detection and diagnosis of disease

· Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Naondevices (CRANN), led by Prof. John Boland, and researching nanotechnology applications

· Centre for Telecommunications Value Chain Research (CTVR), led by Prof. Donal O’Mahony, and researching telecommunications technologies

· Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), led by Michael Turley and Prof. Dr. Stefan Decker, researching the semantic web

· Lero, led by Prof. Kevin Ryan, and researching software engineering

· The Regenerative Medicine Institute (Remedi), led by Prof. Tim O’Brien, and researching gene and cell therapy for tissue repair

I had returned from Beijing the previous evening, and got up very early that Monday morning to drive down to Cork for 8.00am. The address follows:

--

Welcome. 24 hours ago I was in China, where I have been a regular visitor this decade. I am sure many of you here in Cork will be proudly aware that your city is twinned with the city of Shanghai, since 2005. Perhaps only some of you will be aware that in addition to a sharing of challenges and opportunities as a nation’s second capital, that both cities have 021 as their city telephone dialing code!

China is one of the few nations to have put a man in space. They have a stated ambition of a man on the moon within the next decade. Just recently, they demonstrated a millimeter accurate trajectory in intercepting at high speed, and thus deliberately destroying, one of their own satellites. They have just two weeks ago launched their first satellite of the first non-US global positioning system (GPS) constellation, a full two years ahead of likely launch of the first satellites of the European Galileo GPS constellation.

China is widely accepted as the global focus of manufacturing, including high value intricate parts and systems. But it is quite clear that China is also increasingly undertaking world class scientific research and development, and is doing so specifically to enhance the national competitiveness. Large science parks co-exist alongside manufacturing zones to further improve their processes and capabilities. There is high investment in research and development for improving the environment, improving energy efficiency, and improving health care. Biopharma and biodevice research and manufacturing is collocated with large clinical hospitals. There are rumours of nanomanufacturing and nanofabrication initiatives being planned. There are high levels of technology literacy, appreciation and fascination, particularly amongst the young. Space science merely accelerates a scientific and technology culture, together with an immense national pride.

Minister Martin has stated that “Ireland’s sustained economic growth and prosperity depends upon establishing a culture of scientific and technological innovation‚ a high level of research and development‚ and a globally competitive knowledge-based economy”.

In my view, we have yet to establish a deep culture of scientific and technological innovation. Given the major economies – the US and China - and their investment and momentum in science and engineering, where is there room for us here in Ireland ? What should be our focus, if we are not to conduct catch-up “me-too” science ?

A world class scientific result is now increasingly no longer the privilege of a single dedicated science professional. Today, it is far more usually the work of teams, collaborating domestically and worldwide. As but one example, consider how laboratories world wide collaborated extensively with their peers in China to identify the virus in 2003 which had led to unexplained deaths amongst poultry workers in Guangdong province: hitherto virus in poultry which was neutral to humans, but which had mutated. To my knowledge however, Ireland then played no role in the international detective work.

Today, I believe that the greatest opportunities for novel discovery lie on the boundaries between disciplines, areas in which specialists from a variety of backgrounds work together on a common challenge. Equally, the activities with the likely highest benefits to society and economic opportunities may be discovered when others may be too narrowly focused. The most likely successful structures are inter-disciplinary and highly collaborative, both science and engineering, teams, which is why we have – centres for science and engineering technologies – CSETs.

The Minister has mentioned the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre, and this morning we will hear more about it and each of its six peer CSETs. All the CSETs are inter-disciplinary. As an example, the convergence of biological expertise with semiconductor engineering and nanoparticle scientists in the BDI CSET is leading to highly sensitive and hence early detection and low cost detection of diseases. The collaboration of radio frequency physicists, with software and electronic engineers, with market trading theorists and business analysts in the CTVR CSET means that radio frequencies need no longer be exclusively licensed and auctioned to the most competent bidders, and instead that right to use specific frequencies can be dynamically traded as a new global commodity: COMREG has described this initiative as Ireland’s potential new gold.

We need an integrated national focus to yield economic and social success. Cross agency co-operation on sustaining research, and development, nationwide on a small, carefully chosen, number of specific scientific and engineering problems which, if solved here in Ireland, will yield intense value for our tax payers’ investment. Such investments clearly need to be thoughtful and nationally strategic.

As taxpayers, we now own seven highly energetic CSETs, led by seven outstanding scientific chief executives whom you will meet today, our centre directors. Will the portfolio of economic and social agencies as part of our civil service now build on the CSETs, these seven people and their teams, as the foundation for a sustainable economic and social benefits for the decades ahead ?

The focus is not solely on increasing R&D undertaken in Ireland, but also problems which if solved will provide immense value to our society and to our economy. If the agencies can collectively execute well on the CSET model, I believe that Ireland will have built a global show case which we will hold in pride in the years ahead.

The LeMass era, also associated with TK Whitaker, opened Ireland to international economies. The IDA was established, leading to substantial manufacturing jobs, and also which a decade ago gave birth to its sister agency Enterprise Ireland. The concept of a free economic zone was one important tactic used in the national strategy, and which has been widely admired by the Chinese and others. Today, now, in this – as yet unclaimed and unnamed - era, our administration has established SFI. In this era, the CSET model, if fully developed as a national initiative of carefully orchestrated strategic impact , will I believe be even more significant than the model of a free economic zone.

2007 has so far been of public concern here in Cork, with plant closures. But Cork is uniquely placed through its formal alliance with the east to demonstrate the economic and social benefits of a sustained focus on science and technology, including in particular international co-operation. Like Shanghai, Cork has the number 21 associated with it; and like Shanghai, Cork has an opportunity to come of age, as a dynamic and energetic location in the 21^st century.”