Highlights and daily business – the specialised committees at work

What were the main tasks of the Specialised Committee International Cooperation last year? The committee’s president, Urs Baltensperger, pauses only briefly to think: most of the work had been “hard and unspectacular”, but the committee had been well supported by the Administrative Offices throughout. The three specialised committees of the SNSF carry out key tasks on behalf of the Research Council, the most important being the evaluation of proposals in their respective areas of competence: interdisciplinary research, international cooperation, and careers. In this evaluation work, they are supported by panels composed of national and international experts. Within these three areas, they also develop funding strategies for the SNSF and draft Research Council statements on science policy matters. The members of the specialised committees are elected from among the one hundred or so scientists comprising the Research Council.

In addition to its daily work, each specialised committee is aware of the specific challenges it has to deal with. “For the Specialised Committee International Cooperation, the highlight of 2016 was the agreement on research policy between Switzerland and the EU. It is a great relief that we are once more a fully associated member of the European research community,” says Urs Baltensperger, who is Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry at the Paul Scherrer Institute. But cooperation with Europe is only one aspect of the committee’s work. On behalf of the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation, the Specialised Committee International Co-operation works alongside research funding organisations in Argentina, China, Japan, the state of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and South Korea. In addition, the SNSF has initiated cooperation with other research funders, e.g. the National Science Foundation in the United States. “Together with our partners, we aim to promote collaboration between groups that include the best researchers from both countries,” says Urs Baltensperger. Setting up such collaborative projects was highly time-consuming. The parties involved had to agree on all the specifics, starting with the choice of a lingua franca. Even if the two sides did not invest the same amount of funds – Switzerland assumes a far larger share than the emerging countries – care was taken to ensure approximately the same level of scientific participation for both.

For the Specialised Committee Interdisciplinary Research, implementation of the redesigned Sinergia scheme was the main highlight. “The funding scheme is being geared 100% to interdisciplinarity,” says Rita Franceschini, president of the Specialised Committee. A linguist from Switzerland and professor at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano in South Tirol, she is optimistic about the innovations: “We are hoping that researchers will apply the lens of another researcher from another discipline to their own topic, and that these exchanges will lead to groundbreaking research. We want to give scientists who think outside the box the freedoms that they need.” Since introducing the changes to the funding scheme, the SNSF has received approximately 160 Sinergia projects involving two or more groups engaged in collaborative and interdisciplinary research. Looking to the future, Rita Franceschini is hoping that more applicants will show a willingness to take risks and more women will be successful with their applications.

The SNSF is now recalibrating its funding scheme for women researchers. For 25 years, Marie Heim-Vögtlin (MHV) grants helped women who had interrupted their research career for family reasons – mainly childcare duties – to make a comeback in academia. The MHV grants are now set to be replaced by the new PRIMA funding scheme. “PRIMA will enable outstanding female talents to do research at the highest level. We will be able to offer them a generously funded grant for up to five years, so that they can successfully negotiate the demanding phase leading up to a professorship,” says Markus Fischer, member of the Specialised Committee Careers and professor of plant ecology at the University of Bern. “Our goal is to finally increase the number of female professors in Switzerland, which is still too low.” But Markus Fischer stresses that along with important strategic discussions and the creation of this new funding scheme, the daily business of the Specialised Committee Careers consists mainly in monitoring the quality of the evaluation process.