Funding cuts lead to questions about research grants

In 2009, state funding to the Academy of Sciences was cut by nearly 5 billion Kč, part of an overall tempering of public spending as the government tries to weather an economic crisis. The country's scientists expressed outrage, and with the state pushing scientists toward private investors, they have been angered further. While government-funded research need not focus on commercial returns, scientists say the new push puts a premium on research that yields profits at the expense of pure knowledge.

The issue of funding for the sciences has brought diverse parties to the table: universities, researchers, private companies and the state. The Czech Republic is still considering how they will all cooperate, and many are looking abroad for examples from other countries. A seminar held in Prague Nov. 18 and 19 and organized by the Danish Embassy in cooperation with the government and the Czech Technical University, sought to promote connections between scientists engaged in research and development, the government and the business sector. The meetings, held at Prague's Technical Library, highlighted just how disparate the Czech Republic's research environment is compared with Denmark's.

Titled "Building the Bridge Between Research and Business," the seminar featured several leaders from the Danish research and development field as well as representatives from the University of Southern Denmark. The Danes have found success in partnerships between research institutions and corporations, and members of the Czech government and research community have looked at their model for potential inspiration.

Jesper Jespersen, manager of the Novi Science and Research Park in Aalborg, Denmark, offered Novi as a viable model for what he characterized as "making knowledge profitable."

Novi is a government-subsidized science and research industrial park, where 90 companies have set up shop to undertake research and development funded by cooperation among the government, universities and international and domestic venture capital. Novi receives 10 million euros ($14.9 million/254.4 million Kč) in EU funding and 50 million euros worth of private investments each year, leading to an annual return of 4.5 million euros. The funding set-up has been one of the keys to Novi's success, especially over the past year, Jespersen said, and is something the Czechs might consider.

"Due to the financial crisis, it's very difficult to bring in money for start-up companies," he said. "But when we cooperate with universities, we double the value of our money because they match our funding."

The government has frozen science funding at the 2009 level of 24.83 billion Kč rather than the originally planned 28.92 billion Kč because of the need to cut public spending. At the same time, the government is adopting new methods to evaluate scientific results and decide which projects receive funding.

Czech scientists are up in arms about government funding cuts to pure research and development undertaken by the Academy of Sciences. The government says the cuts are necessary to make research and development more efficient, especially in light of the financial crisis. But scientists say an increased allocation of funding to applied research commercializes science and will have negative effects on the quality of their work. The government claims that such cuts are necessary and that researchers must actively pursue other possibilities for funding from international institutions.

"The Czech government is limiting funding in a number of areas, including research, due to the current economic crisis," said Tomáš Bouška, spokesman for the Education Ministry. "But there is an increasing possibility to apply for research funding through European funds, such as the operational program Research and Development for Innovations."

Cuts in scientific funding affect more than working scientists; they also threaten the future crop of Czech researchers, according to one academic. Donald Sparling, former head of the Office for International Studies at Masaryk University in Brno, called attention to the role government funding for research plays in the development of university programs. When the government changes the amount of funds or the way in which they are allotted, academia is forced to roll with the punches, he said. But the funding system was developed in the '90s, and reforming it is going to be "a pretty complex process," he said.

"It would have been better if the Academy of Sciences had been abolished in the early '90s. This would have sped up the transformation of universities into institutions more closely resembling their counterparts in the West," he said. "I admit the current situation is not quite that simple because of the tendency of trying to shift more research money to applied research, and that does have negative implications for both the academy and universities. At the same time, it tends to drive a wedge between traditional universities and the technical universities."

In Denmark, a numbers game is in play to get a return on investment from research. For example, at Novi, Jespersen said only a fraction of research returns enough profit to fund every venture, successful or not.

"If we start 10 companies, four will die in development, and four will break even. So you must make your money on the last two, and you never know which those will be," he said.

Keld Harbo of the Leadership and Corporate Strategy Department at the University of Southern Denmark said biases on both sides need to be overcome in order to create a successful collaboration.

"Companies are often scared of so-called 'clever' people," he said. "But, at the same time, universities are arrogant to believe that all innovation comes from research. It's about collaboration, and the more, the better."

Stephan Delbos can be reached at
sdelbos@praguepost.com