NSERC | James Colliander

NSERC Open Data Exploration

Sat, 24 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

NSERC Open Data Exploration

The 2018 federal budget of Canada 🇨🇦 announced significant new investments in research. The Canada Research Coordinating Committee is defining a work plan to promote “international and risky research; support for Canada’s next generation of researchers; equity, diversity and inclusion; and indigenous research and capacity building”.

This site explores the NSERC Awards Data with the goal of helping Canada to achieve the best outcomes for research and training of future researchers. Open analysis of research investments also helps advance the goals outlined in the Mandate Letter to the Minister of Science.

Canada’s Open Government Portal includes NSERC Awards Data from 1995 through 2016. The awards data (in .csv format) were copied to an Amazon Web Services S3 bucket and analyzed using computing resources from PIMS on cloud infrastructure from Compute Canada and Cybera.

You are invited to collaborate on the analysis of investments made by NSERC. Access to the data and source code are shared in a public repository on GitHub.

TODO Set up similar analyses for SSHRC

TODO Set up similar analysis for CIHR

Overview

Interactive Notebook: Exploring NSERC

NSERC Budget

Year	Total	Not Discovery	Discovery
1995	451159747	267113329	184046418
1996	434116337	247533171	186583166
1997	417146970	227810152	189336818
1998	477141539	266731883	210409656
1999	526133116	299956302	226176814
2000	537934451	294508093	243426358
2001	554698568	316537927	238160641
2002	615320903	357333281	257987622
2003	696997644	423803197	273194447
2004	765643760	488699482	276944278
2005	820640167	519567082	301073085
2006	854567999	545233090	309334909
2007	968713281	655321429	313391852
2008	980889930	664642572	316247358
2009	1003483757	680426976	323056781
2010	1026366682	702101715	324264967
2011	1035205511	705872398	329333113
2012	1021894152	685991741	335902411
2013	1018139165	681486392	336652773
2014	1038149414	698064881	340084533
2015	1068044894	727279990	340764904
2016	1142066427	791496311	350570116

Accumulated Program Investments [1995 - 2016] Top 25

ProgramNameEN	Reported Dollars
Discovery Grants Program - Individual	5949789135
Canada Research Chairs	1590512911
Collaborative Research and Development Grants	948122955
Strategic Projects - Group	908959760
Networks of Centres of Excellence	762559105
Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)	565583275
Postgraduate Scholarships	435601321
Industrial Research Chairs	398835692
Research Networks	382614308
Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarships - Doctoral	352888065
Postgraduate Scholarships - Doctoral	340062867
Postdoctoral Fellowships	283101969
Subatomic Physics Envelope - Project	267988202
University Undergraduate Student Research Awards	258863102
Major Resources Support Program - Infrastructure	201128769
Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research - Group	186214812
Engage Grants Program	185938402
Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarships - Master’s	175254486
Cooperative Activities	163228194
College and Community Innovation Program	161161262
Major Facilities Access Grants	159523772
Collaborative Research and Training Experience	147907095
Canada Excellence Research Chairs	137314666
Discovery Grants Program - Accelerator Supplements	121369119
Postgraduate Scholarships - Master’s	114880771

Accumulated Principal Investigator Investments [1995-2016] Top 25

Name	Reported Dollars
Hormes , Josef	99836800
Gupta , Arvind	97587570
McWalter , Ian	75503588
Fortier , Louis	72542772
Frise , Peter	63874923
Barge , Brian	50400000
Thomlinson , William	46610800
Fedosejevs , Robert	40720798
McDonald , Arthur	36781300
Orr , Robert	32043881
Smith , Donald	31227906
Mufti , Aftab	28761712
Wallace , Douglas	28433833
Servos , Mark	28130452
Rogers , Harry	27590000
Salama , Andre	26296562
Burton , Howard	25000000
Yada , Rickey	24982617
Clowes , Ronald	24072844
Pelton , Robert	23985763
Svensson , Carl	22782441
Lamb , Robert	21349800
Chrisman , Nicholas	21286250
Larter , Stephen	20024564
Bourbonnais , Normand	17753965

TODO NSERC’s Open Data does not report gender of PIs. Find ways to measure equity, diversity, inclusion metrics over past investments.
TODO How can we connect the reported dollar investments to measurements of research output?

Discovery

Interactive Notebook: Evaluation Groups Analysis

Evaluation Groups

Award Amounts

TODO Why do 1501 and 1502 receive so much more investment than other EGs?

Number of Awards

TODO Why are there so many more awards in 1501 and 1502 than in other EGs?

Bin Frequency

Example: 1504 (Chemistry); FiscalYear 2013

TODO Find a way to infer bin levels based on awards data amounts

Engage

Interactive Notebook: Engage Grants

TODO Find a way to connect Engage Grant investments to economic impact metrics.

Budget 2017, Naylor’s review, and the Mathematical Sciences in Canada

Fri, 21 Apr 2017 19:29:59 +0000

James Colliander, Director of the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences (PIMS)
Nassif Ghoussoub, Director of the Banff International Research Station (BIRS)
Ian Hambleton, Director of the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences (Fields)
Luc Vinet, Directeur du Centre de Recherches Mathématiques (CRM)

The direct funding of research initiatives on artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing via Budget 2017, and the release of the report of Canada’s Fundamental Science Review present an opportunity to reflect on the role of mathematical sciences within Canada’s scientific heritage and future, but also on our country’s ways of funding research.

The importance of the mathematical sciences (mathematics, statistics and computer science) is deepening in almost all areas of knowledge. Mathematical sciences provide a conceptual infrastructure underpinning advances in biology, engineering, humanities, medicine, social sciences and beyond. Progress in our understanding in all these fields depends upon advanced research and high-level training in the mathematical sciences.

Canadian Mathematician John Charles Fields, the creator of the Fields medal (often dubbed the Nobel prize for mathematics), also played a key role in the founding of the National Research Council in 1916. Today, Canada is served by a collaborative network of mathematical sciences research institutes: the Centre de Recherches Mathématiques (CRM) in Quebec, the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences in Ontario, and the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences (PIMS) in Western Canada.

The institutes amplify Canada’s capacity for discovery and invention through partnerships that intertwine our nation’s universities with academic and industrial researchers from across the globe. Together, the institutes created Mitacs in 1999, which, under the leadership of Arvind Gupta, became a cornerstone of the government’s effort to link our graduate students (in all disciplines) with industry. This accomplishment was amply recognized in Budget 2017. In 2003, they collaborated with Berkeley’s Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) to found the Banff International Research Station (BIRS), a unique North-American research infrastructure on Canadian soil, that provides an environment for creative, synergetic, intense and prolonged interactions between mathematical scientists and investigators in other areas of research.

In 2002, the three institutes committed to provide long-term funding to the Atlantic Association for Research in the Mathematical Sciences (AARMS), a network that plays an important role in the mathematical sciences research activities of the Atlantic region.

In 2003, PIMS collaborated with Berkeley’s Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) to found the Banff International Research Station (BIRS), a unique North-American research infrastructure on Canadian soil, that provides an environment for creative, synergetic, intense and prolonged interactions between mathematical scientists and investigators in other areas of research.

The need for leadership to advance the mathematical, computational and statistical understanding of information, the development of data science, and the advent of machine learning, prompted the institutes in 2012 to use their own resources to invest in the creation of CANSSI, the Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute. That NSERC did not have the resources to do so at that time sheds some light on the community’s reaction to how Budget 2017 continues to shut out the Tri-Council.

AI rests on mathematical sciences. Indeed, some of this field’s prominent leaders pursued their foundational research within BIRS, CRM, Fields and PIMS. AI needs further advances in the mathematical sciences to thrive. We celebrate strong support of AI research but the disjointed approach used by government for its substantial investment in the area of deep learning totally missed the opportunity to include and exploit the national resource that BIRS, CRM, Fields, PIMS and CANSSI represent.

This example is but one of many examples that illustrate the importance of some of the excellent recommendations of the report of the Science Review Panel. Indeed, Canada developed world leading expertise and operations in science policy during the era of Pierre Elliot Trudeau. The work of the Senate Special Committee on Science Policy, chaired by Senator Maurice Lamontagne, identified principles to guide Canada’s future governments. The consultation of the scientific community overseen by the panel chaired by David Naylor aligns with these best practices. Direct investments disbursed through political channels, instead of through the Tri-Council’s scientific peer review process, undermine the transparency of research funding programs, and can miss opportunities such as the one we described. Funding allocations to support research should follow consistent and rigorous evaluation processes incorporating independent scientific peer review.

Toward Global Science Excellence

Sun, 28 Aug 2016 19:27:19 +0000

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s ministerial mandate letters for Science and Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) outline an agenda to investigate and improve the nation’s innovation ecosystem. Roundtable discussions on various themes are taking place across the nation as part of Canada’s Innovation Agenda, an initiative driven by Minister Navdeep Bains (ISED) and Minister Kirsty Duncan (Science). Minister Duncan has also launched Canada’s Fundamental Science Review and empowered an eminent panel chaired by Dr. David Naylor with a mandate to review and make recommendations to improve Canada’s science policy.

I recently participated in a roundtable discussion on the theme Global Science Excellence. The event was convened by Dr. Maurice Moloney, CEO of the Global Institute for Food Security, and took place at the University of Saskatchewan. The roundtable panel included representatives from biology, chemistry, computer science, environmental science, geoscience, mathematics, pharmacy, physics and leaders from provincial and federal governments.

After reflecting on the panel discussion, here are four points that stand out for me:

Transparent sharing of government data through resources like the Open Government Portal should continue. Government decisions will be better when based upon insights informed by publicly accessible data. (Some panelists requested access to my open Jupyter notebooks on NSERC investments during 1995-2014 and 2012-2016.)
Decisions on government investments in scientific research should be decided scientifically through vigorous peer review and not politically through direct line items in the federal budget.
Ideas from mathematical sciences (computer science, statistics, mathematics) are influencing almost all areas of inquiry. The measured impact of mathematical sciences on the economy far exceeds expectations typically held by policy makers. Systematic underfunding of mathematics, statistics and computer science obstructs Canada’s potential for global science excellence.
Researchers from various disciplines request greater coherence across the programs offered by government. Advancing human knowledge through basic research, applying breakthroughs to solve problems in society or industry, developing and validating applications and prototypes, and scaling innovations through commercialization or other social processes are all endeavours that merit government investment. These activities unfold over differing time scales, involve differing sources of inspiration, and are driven by differing incentive systems and require a coherent collection of programs designed around these differences.

The Government of Canada is reviewing its approach to supporting research, development and commercialization. I encourage everyone to share their views.

Mathematical Scientist's Guide to Innovation Funding Sources in Canada

Sun, 06 Mar 2016 20:14:04 +0000

The NSERC investment in the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences (PIMS), the Fields Institute, and the Centre de Recherches Mathématiques (CRM) was last renewed in 2014. These institutes contributed funds from this investment to support the launch of the Canadian Statistical Sciences Insitute (CANSSI) and continued to provide support for the Atlantic Association for the Research in the Mathematical Sciences (AARMS). The Institutes received additional seed funds, not sourced through the math/stats Discovery envelope, to support the launch of the Insitutes Innovation Platform (IIP), a program aimed at fostering “partnerships between mathematics and statistics researchers and non-academic partners in the public and private sectors.” This post provides guidance to mathematical scientists who may wish to seek funding to support collaborations with non-academic partners. So far, I’ve explored programs offered by NSERC and Mitacs and hope to supplement this guide with programs offered by the provinces sometime in the future.

NSERC Innovation Programs

NSERC Connect

Mathematical scientists can explore the idea to collaborate with industry using funds offered through the NSERC Connect program. NSERC Connect is ramified into three levels with funding support up to CAD5K, CAD10K and CAD25K. The CAD5K grant can be used to cover travel expenses related to the development of a new academy-industry collaboration. Regional programs aimed at promoting new academy-industry research collaborations or student-industry training programs may be supported at the CAD10K level. National programs targeting “substantial new research collaborations” between post-secondary researchers and non-academic partners may be supported at the CAD25K level.

NSERC Engage

The NSERC Engage program offers CAD25K to support academic researchers working to solve problems for an industry partner. The funds are directed to the academic researcher. All intellectual property developed in the collaboration are owned by the collaborating industry partner. Engage grants can be extended with Engage Plus. Industrial internships for graduate student and postdoctoral researchers can be supplemented with Mitacs Accelerate (see below). The application process is quite simple. Pawel Pralat of Ryerson has secured seven Engage grants. Some further notes (in the form of a GitHub Gist) on NSERC Engage including the application template are available here.

NSERC supports deeper investments in academic-industrial research collaboration through the Strategic Partnership Grants and Collaborative Research and Development Grants (CRD) programs. NSERC also offers funding support for talented undergraduates to collaborate with industry through the Industrial Undergraduate Student Research Awards (IUSRA) program.

Mitacs Innovation Programs

Mitacs Accelerate

The Mitacs Accelerate program generates CAD15K to support four month long industrial internships for graduate student and postdoctoral researchers. The intern receives at least CAD10K as a stipend during the collaboration. Mitacs provides CAD7.5K and the industry partner provides the matching CAD7.5K. NSERC Engage grants can be combined with Mitacs Accelerate internships to fund a longer term interaction between university researchers and industry. The Mitacs Accelerate Cluster program is designed to support the formation of teams focused on advancing on a single cohesive research plan. Relative to a collection of single Accelerate internships, there are significant financial benefits generated through the Mitacs Accelerate Cluster program. Some further notes (in the form of a GitHub Gist) including the application template and “two-pagers” for industry partners and universities on Mitacs Accelerate are available here.

Mitacs Elevate

The Mitacs Elevate program provides a two-year training program to support postdoctoral fellows who lead an industrially relevant research project. The program supplements the academic activities of a postdoctoral fellowship with specialized training in communication, leadership and other skills crucial to success in business. Elevate Fellows receive a salary of at least CAD50K per year.

Further Assistance

Researchers with some interest in collaborating with non-academic partners are encouraged to reach out to staff at the Institutes, Mitacs, NSERC or their institution’s research services office. If I can be of any assistance, please feel free to contact me.

Canada is Retreating from Investment in Science and Engineering

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 18:59:42 +0000

(The following is a slightly edited version of an invited post appearing on The Inside Agenda Blog on TVO’s web space.)

Canada retreats from Science

Canada is retreating from investment in science and engineering. Public letters (by 10 prominent physicists, 336 mathematicians, 49 leading researchers) have signaled alarms at changes to the NSERC Discovery Grants Program and the elimination of the Major Resources Support (MRS) and Research Tools and Instruments (RTI) programs. Investments in the training of the next generation of researchers through the Postdoctoral Fellowships Program have been slashed. Without funds to operate laboratories, without funds for new tools, and without funds for young researchers, Canada’s science and engineering research enterprise faces disaster.

Mission Drift

The program cuts are not driven by a decrease in the budget to NSERC. The program cuts are instead the result of a transfer of funds away from people and discovery into new programs giving money to businesses, a transformation characterized by the recent report of the federal R&D panel as “mission drift.” The Engage Program, described by NSERC President Suzanne Fortier as spawning business-academy “first dates” provides an illustration. Consider the details of the program:

NSERC provides $25K of taxpayer funds to pay for a six-month research and development project between a university researcher and a company already involved in research and development.
The company is not required to invest any money on the project.
Any intellectual property developed by the project is owned by the company.
There is no direct return back to taxpayers, to the university researcher, or to the university on the investment.

The program description reports that “these grants are intended to foster the development of new research partnerships between an academic researcher and a company that have never collaborated together before.” However, the Engage Program does not appear to be producing robust collaborative partnerships. There have been cool anecdotes about ski goggles and fiber optic guitar pickups but insufficient reporting on the program as a whole. Recently, in response to an inquiry from the official opposition regarding the conversion rate of Engage grants into the more substantial Collaborative Research and Development (CRD) grants, NSERC reported:

“348 distinct researchers have received both Engage grants and Collaborative Research and Development grants since these programs have operated, and this without regard to the years or the order in time. This number represents 10.62% of the total number of grantees for these two programs.”

This is a confusing statement and does not accurately reveal how many Engage Grants matriculated to become CRD projects. NSERC President Fortier has written that

“Nearly a thousand Canadian companies have benefited from the Engage experience to date.”

This represents an investment of $25,000,000. From a program level perspective, and not just anecdotally, what was achieved?

Despite announcements to the contrary by NSERC and Minister of State (Science and Technology) Gary Goodyear, the evidence shows that NSERC and the NRC (now described as a “business concierge”) are transfering funds away from “blue sky” basic research programs to Canadian businesses through programs like Engage.

Inadequate Consultation

Major changes in NSERC funding have often involved the research community through a long range plan (LRP) consultation. Long range plans for Subatomic Physics and Astronomy were recently completed; the LRP for Mathematics/Statistics is close to completion. The LRP consultation process activates a nationwide discussion by a community of researchers, contributes scientific input to the federal research investment strategy, and, in some cases, identifies opportunities for cost savings. The broad consultation of the LRP process respectfully empowers researchers to contribute to the policy discussions affecting them and, ultimately, all of Canada.

In contrast, there was no broad consultation in advance of the recent decisions to eliminate the Major Resource Support (MRS) and Research Tools and Instruments (RTI) programs. Shortly after University of Ottawa Chemistry Professor David Bryce’s letter and related public messages appeared, Minister Goodyear announced that these actions would only be a moratorium for one year as the government “seeks counsel” from the scientific community. Minister Goodyear’s remarks were reassuring but the terms of the RTI consultation have turned out to be much more narrow in scope. Instead of seeking creative input from the Canadian scientific community on how best to consolidate the “plethora of programs” and to “simplify the application process,” the consultation asks scientists and engineers to choose between Option 1 (rock) and Option 2 (hard place).

Canada was and can be a spectacular place for scientific and engineering studies. Canada had a research investment strategy that was once the “envy of the world.” Rapid policy changes with inadequate participation by the research community in the decision process threaten Canada’s long-term prosperity.

On Today's NSERC Contact Newsletter Item Regarding Postdocs

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 18:58:36 +0000

I received today the September 2012 Contact Newsletter (volume 36, number 4) from NSERC via email. The fourth item in the newsletter reads:

Postdoctoral Fellowships - no change to number of awards
Over the last ten years, the volume of applications to the NSERC PDF Program has doubled to about 1,300, impacting the workload of volunteer selection committee members. A change to the eligibility rules for the Postdoctoral Fellowships (PDF) Program was made to ensure that applicants' and reviewers' time was used productively.

The eligibility rules were changed to allow students to apply only once during the eligibility window. Please note that this change does not affect the budget for the PDF Program or the number of awards.

More information about the new policy is outlined in the Program Guide for Students and Fellows.

Over the last ten years, the faculty at Canada’s Universities has expanded by the addition of 2000 Canada Research Chairs and other strategic recruitment. This “brain gain” has had the desired effect: more highly qualified personnel are being produced by the system. Over the period 1999-2009, there has been an expansion in enrollment in degree granting programs (data extracted from 2010-2011 Tables):

Bachelor's enrollment expanded 34% (Table 44)
Master's enrollment expanded by 56% (Table 45)
Doctoral enrollment expanded by 70% (Table 46)

It does involve a lot of work for volunteers to assess postdoctoral fellowship applications. Instead of punishing the next generation of scientists by restricting the number of competitions they can enter to one, an alternate solution to the workload problem would be to correspondingly expand the size of the volunteer review committee. I volunteer to help with those assessments in mathematics. Other Canadian scientists and engineers could indicate their willingness to help with the assessments by politely contacting their program officers.

The Contact Newsletter item also reports that the budget and number of awards will not be changed. Note the substantial changes that have already occurred between 2010 and 2012.

Canada Restricts Athlete Participation to One Olympic Games per Lifetime

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 18:57:08 +0000

The (false) headline conveys the sporting analog of NSERC’s new policy on Postdoctoral Fellowship Competitions:

Effective as of the 2013 competition, you can only apply once to the NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowships (PDF) Program; however, applicants whose first PDF application was submitted prior to the 2013 competition may submit a second application provided they are within the eligibility window.

What's going on? Why would Canada choose to limit the pool of participants competing for advanced training opportunities in science and engineering? A recent letter to the Canadian Association of Postdoctoral Scholars by NSERC's Director (Scholarships and Fellowships Division) Serge Villemure gives the following reasons:

In recent years, NSERC has seen a growing disparity between the number of applications submitted to the Postdoctoral Fellowships (PDF) program and the number of awards available. As a result, NSERC has decided to reduce the maximum number of applications an individual may submit in a lifetime to its PDF program from two to one.
This change to the eligibility rules will contribute to a better alignment between both the number of applications submitted and the awards available, thereby streamlining the application and review processes. Limiting the number of applications an individual may submit to the program will not impact the the current budget projections or the number of anticipated awards available.

The success rate for the postdoctoral fellowships competition in 2011 was 9.3% and in 2012 the rate was 7.8%. (The tables and visualizations are appended below.) Another strategy to confront the “growing disparity” is to invest more money into Canadian human capacity for research and development by expanding the number of awards. However, changes in NSERC policy over the past decade have transferred investment away from its mission supporting discovery and the training of highly qualified personnel into many new programs aimed at commercialization of research. Restricting Canada’s young scientists to one postdoctoral fellowship competition per lifetime has “better alignment” with the transfer of funds toward commercialization, but it is a bad policy change.

Funding support for graduate programs from Ontario (and likely from other provinces too?) is frequently limited to four years. This means that faculty and departments are under pressure to have their graduate students complete their PhD in four years. Unfortunately, many students do not meet this timeline. Funds to pay for extensions of PhD studies into a fifth and sometimes a sixth year must come from other sources and are often uncertain, conditional upon adequate progress, and may involve expanded teaching responsibilities. Graduate students know all this.

Consider the point of view of a graduate student. Suppose the key advances for the student’s thesis are completed during the summer between the third and fourth year of studies and the student starts writing the thesis during the Fall of the fourth year. The funding uncertainty for the fifth year motivates the student to want to finish the PhD in the fourth year. To maintain a career in science, the student needs to also spend that Fall preparing job and fellowship applications, a process that can take up a lot of time and mental energy. The student’s application materials (research statement, letters of recommendation, thesis abstract) will be not as strong as they would be if the thesis were entirely nailed down. Nevertheless, the funding uncertainty for the fifth motivates the student to submit postdoc applications in the fourth year.

What happens next? In this situation, students sometimes get a postdoc but more frequently don’t. When they don’t, they stay on for another year and often make substantial advances. Their science comes together during the fourth year and the summer thereafter. They have a working draft of their thesis at the start of the fifth year and can concentrate on applications. Instead of merely talking about the student’s potential, the letters of recommendation can reference accomplishments. Students who fail to land a postdoc offer in their fourth year often emerge as extremely strong candidates in the next year.

PhD students will soon be asking graduate advisers for advice: should I apply for an NSERC postdoc now or should I wait until next year? The right answer was both. Under the new policy, the answer is not clear. A certain outcome: some excellent candidates will be forbidden to enter the competition because they applied the year before.

NSERC’s new one-postdoc-competition-per-lifetime rule combined with the funding uncertainties around fifth and sixth year support are a lethal combination. The victim is Canada’s scientific research capacity.

I’ve set up a “hive” on BuzzData (an open social media platform for discussions around data) focused on NSERC. My view is that there is a need for respectful discussion about Canada’s research and development policy driven by transparent data. So far, there are four public Datarooms devoted to the following topics:

Others are welcome to join the hive.

NSERC Funded PDFs data (Thanks David Kent.)

Awards/Applicants (Year)
250 / 1169 (08)
254 / 1220 (09)
286 / 1341 (10)
133 / 1431 (11)
98 / 1254 (12)

(Extracted from NSERC’s Scholarships and Fellowships Competition Results.)

The acronyms appearing in the tables are defined as follows:

CGS M/PGS M (one-year scholarship for the first or second year of graduate studies);
CGS D2/PGS D2 (two-year scholarship tenable during the first five years of doctoral studies);
CGS D3/PGS D3 (three-year scholarship tenable during the first five years of doctoral studies); and
PDF (two-year postdoctoral fellowship).

Visualizations by Brent Pym:

2012-08-21 Addendum (New visualizations by Brent Pym.)

Business Earmarks or Merit Competition: Which is the Better Federal Research Strategy?

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 18:54:34 +0000

Investments by governments to support research and development are crucial to economic prosperity, job creation, scientific advancement, and improvements to the future to be inherited by children. How should these investments be selected?

Merit review is a competitive process leveraging the expertise of a specially qualified panel to direct investments in research and development.
Earmarks are appropriations given to specific recipients or targeted areas, without competition, to satisfy the intent of government.

When viewed over the time scale on which benefits of research occur (decades), the merit review process is the better strategy. When viewed over the time scale of election cycles (years), governments often consider earmarks to be the better strategy. Visionary governments who followed the advice of scientists like Francis Bacon and Vannevar Bush built research systems that spawned the industrial revolution, the space and electronics industries, the internet, …. Canadian governments of the past who listened to John Charles Fields and Maurice Lamontaigne launched Canadian industries through the NRC and NSERC.

“The wealth of a nation once depended on its natural resources or the sheer size of its land, or its potential labour force; but now it is coming to depend more on its reservoirs of knowledge and its ability to organize and utilize them than on the older criteria.” –A Science Policy for Canada, Lamontagne Report, v. 3, (1976)
(Concerning the allocation of research funds) “It is folly to use as one’s guide in the selection of fundamental science the criterion of utility. Not because (scientists)… despise utility. But because. .. useful outcomes are best identified after the making of discoveries, rather than before.” — John Polanyi, Speech to the Canadian Society for the Weizmann Institute of Science, Toronto (1996-06-02)

“Faced with the admitted difficulty of managing the creative process, we are doubling our efforts to do so. Is this because science has failed to deliver, having given us nothing more than nuclear power, penicillin, space travel, genetic engineering, transistors, and superconductors? Or is it because governments everywhere regard as a reproach activities they cannot advantageously control? They felt that way about the marketplace for goods, but trillions of wasted dollars later, they have come to recognize the efficiency of this self-regulating system. Not so, however, with the marketplace for ideas.” — John Polanyi, Quoted in Martin Moskovits (ed.), Science and Society, the John C. Polanyi Nobel Lareates Lectures (1995)

Instead of listening to today’s voice along this lineage, John Polanyi, Canada’s current federal¹ government listens to Dean Roger Martin.

“What makes a country prosperous is not investment in science and technology. It is businesses producing high paying jobs by having unique products and processes that a customer needs.” — Roger Martin, Canada will shrivel under business-school neglect, dean says , The Globe and Mail (2011-03-16)

Canada, like Texas, doesn’t shrivel.

The report of the expert panel, the “Jenkins Report”, advising the government on the effectiveness of federal support of business research and development recommended² the creation of a new Industrial Research and Innovation Council (IRIC) and separately recommended³ that the NRC be ramified “into a constellation” of new R&D centres, a natural progression following the birth of the Tri-council. Rather than constellating the NRC, Budget 2012 does the opposite with plans for the role of the proposed IRIC to be carried out by a more centralized, business-focused, NRC:

…the Government will consider ways to better focus the National Research Council on demand-driven research, consistent with the recommendations of the Expert Panel. - Budget 2012

The policy implementations of Budget 2012 for CIHR, NSERC, SSHRC will be announced today in a meeting to Vice Presidents [Research] of Canadian universities. Drifting along a decade-long trend, a transfer of funds away from research investment programs distributed through competitive merit review toward new programs aimed at business recipients without competitive review is anticipated. Canadian business innovation gaps will not be solved by cutting funds supporting academic research and education activities.

The wisest investment strategy of federal dollars should rest upon systems involving the best expertise and considerations of the disruptive impact of basic research.

Footnotes:

The current government of Ontario is similar: after earmarking \$50M to the Perimeter Institute in 2011, \$42M was cut out of research in 2012.
"Recommendation 1: Create an Industrial Research and Innovation Council (IRIC), with a clear business innovation mandate (including delivery of business-facing innovation programs, development of a business innovation talent strategy, and other duties over time), and enhance the impact of programs through consolidation and improved whole-of-government evaluation."
"Recommendation 4: Transform the institutes of the National Research Council (NRC) into a constellation of large-scale, sectoral collaborative R&D centres involving business, the university sector and the provinces, while transferring NRC public policy-related research activity to the appropriate federal agencies."

Resources:

Misaligned Incentives in Canadian Science Policy

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 18:53:04 +0000

Budget 2012 continues to shift Canadian federal investment away from basic research toward industrial applied research. This shift is politically expedient: the redirection of funds can be discussed with tantalizing justifications based on job creation, targeted investment, streamlining discovery, and so forth. The shift resonates with a public concerned about frivolous expenditures of dollars collected through taxation. The late Senator from Wisconsin, William Proxmire, advanced this line of political rhetoric by issuing Golden Fleece Awards for science projects he lampooned as unworthy of government investment. Why should the government waste taxpayer money so that scientists can pursue their curiosity? Although slightly slanted with the operative verb “waste”, this is an entirely reasonable question which the scientific community must strive to answer.

Why should the government invest in basic research?

This question was eloquently answered by Vannevar Bush in his report Science: The Endless Frontier to President Roosevelt from July 1945. After my reading of the 2012 Budget, I thought it timely to share some relevant extractions (all emphasis added):

Basic research leads to new knowledge. It provides scientific capital. It creates the fund from which the practical applications of knowledge must be drawn. New products and new processes do not appear full-grown. They are founded on new principles and new conceptions, which in turn are painstakingly developed by research in the purest realms of science. (p. 16)
The simplest and most effective way in which the Government can strengthen industrial research is to support basic research and to develop scientific talent. (p. 17)

One of the peculiarities of basic science is the variety of paths which lead to productive advance. Many of the most important discoveries have come as a result of experiments undertaken with very different purposes in mind. Statistically it is certain that important and highly useful discoveries will result from some fraction of the undertakings in basic science; but the results of any one particular investigation cannot be predicted with accuracy. (p. 15)

Basic research is performed without thought of practical ends. It results in general knowledge and an understanding of nature and its laws. This general knowledge provides the means of answering a large number of important practical problems, though it may not give a complete specific answer to any one of them. The function of applied research is to provide such complete answers. The scientist doing basic research may not be at all interested in the practical applications of his work, yet the further progress of industrial development would eventually stagnate if basic scientific research were long neglected. (p. 15)

Industrial incentive systems are misaligned with basic research

Basic research is the soil from which “innovation” and “commercialization” grow. Where should these foundational studies take place? Should they be carried out by industry or by some cleverly designed industrial-academic partnership? The answers according to Vannevar Bush are illuminating. The incentive systems for industry are rarely aligned with basic research. (A notable exception was Bell Labs, where scientists free to explore basic research produced stunning advances.)

Industry is generally inhibited by preconceived goals, by its own clearly defined standards, and by the constant pressure of commercial necessity. Satisfactory progress in basic science seldom occurs under conditions prevailing in the normal industrial laboratory. There are some notable exceptions, it is true, but even in such cases it is rarely possible to match the universities in respect to the freedom which is so important to scientific discovery. (p. 16)
…Research is the exploration of the unknown and is necessarily speculative. It is inhibited by conventional approaches, traditions, and standards. It cannot be satisfactorily conducted in an atmosphere where it is gauged and tested by operating or production standards. Basic scientific research should not, therefore, be placed under an operating agency whose paramount concern is anything other than research. Research will always suffer when put in competition with operations. (p. 26)

The benefits of basic research do not reach all industries equally or at the same speed. Some small enterprises never receive any of the benefits. (p. 17)

Budget 2012 and the prior decade of mission drift

Over the past decade, there has been a shift in the federal investment in science. The new system aims to industrialize the research activities of university and government scientists. Commercialization, innovation, job creation, whatever you want to call it, is a preconceived goal which constrains the freedom necessary for the unanticipated, the disruptive breakthroughs brought by basic research advances. Despite the recent assurances by Ministers Flaherty and Goodyear that “blue sky” research will continue to receive federal investment, there has been a steady shift toward a system with explicit commercialization incentives instead of one with the freedom open to transformational discovery.

The publicly and privately supported colleges, universities, and research institutes are the centers of basic research. They are the wellsprings of knowledge and understanding. As long as they are vigorous and healthy and their scientists are free to pursue the truth wherever it may lead, there will be a flow of new scientific knowledge to those who can apply it to practical problems in Government, in industry, or elsewhere. (p. 10)
The history of medical science teaches clearly the supreme importance of affording the prepared mind complete freedom for the exercise of initiative. It is the special province of the medical schools and universities to foster medical research in this way - a duty which cannot be shifted to government agencies, industrial organizations, or to any other institutions. (p. 13)

Canada's Research Policy is Misaligned with Scientist's Incentives

The intense desire to deeply understand is the incentive for scientists, especially young scientists, to carry out research. Newton did not have to anticipate the industrialization of space to justify his study of gravity. Darwin did not have to anticipate applications of his studies in the pharmaceutical industry. Einstein did not have to forecast the Global Positioning System to justify investment in the theory of relativity. Canadian scientists aren’t free to pursue their breakthroughs. Instead, we are expected to cultivate relationships with industrial partners through government funded “first dates” and plan commercialization of our ideas in advance of their discovery. Instead of the freedom to pursue the curiosity that emerged from tens of thousands of hours of study, NRC scientists have been promoted and can now play the role of “business concierge”.

Where will these new products come from? How will we find ways to make better products at lower cost? The answer is clear. There must be a stream of new scientific knowledge to turn the wheels of private and public enterprise. There must be plenty of men and women trained in science and technology for upon them depend both the creation of new knowledge and its application to practical purposes. (p. 15)
To serve effectively as the centers of basic research these institutions must be strong and healthy. They must attract our best scientists as teachers and investigators. They must offer research opportunities and sufficient compensation to enable them to compete with industry and government for the cream of scientific talent. (p. 16)

The federal government’s research incentive system is no longer aligned with the intrinsic motivations of scientists.

Further Resources

A Report on the 2012 NSERC Discovery Grants Results for Toronto Math

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 18:51:57 +0000

Fifteen¹ faculty members from the Department of Mathematics at the University of Toronto submitted proposals to the 2012 NSERC Discovery Grants competition. Of these, one was a first time applicant (En), two (Ga, Ia) applied after a successful appeal of 2011 results, and one (Cd) was an appellant whose appeal was denied but could reapply because the 2011 award was for zero dollars. The first table below shows the 2012 results (in thousands of dollars per year) with 2010, 2011 award amounts for those researchers. The second table shows similar data for Toronto mathematicians in the 2011 competition, including the amounts for researchers (1d, 2d, 3d, 4d) whose appeals of 2011 results were rejected. The average for 2012 awards to Toronto mathematicians was 153% the average for 2011.

Average Grant Amount (Toronto Math)

2006: \$27k/y
2007: \$26.3k/y
2008: \$26.5k/y
2009: \$25k/y
2010: \$25.3k/y
2011: \$19.3k/y
2012: \$29.5k/y

Instability Visualized

Viewing the results from the perspective of researchers in these competitions reveals instability in the Discovery Grants evaluation and appeals processes:

Imagine the experience of researcher 2d. This person had five years at \$42k/y, was cut to \$30k/y in 2009, and successfully appealed that outcome. The result of the appeal was a one year reinstatement of the previous grant level at \$42k/y and permission to reapply to the 2011 competition. In 2011, this researcher’s grant was hacked to \$18k/y so this person files another appeal. The 2011 appeal is rejected.
Contrast the experience of professors 4d and Ga. Both launched their Canadian research careers and entered the Discovery Grants competition for the first time in 2011. Ga’s appeal of the \$13k/y result from 2011 was successful and the 2012 competition led to a new result of \$30k/y for the next five years. 4d’s 2011 appeal was denied so this researcher is locked in for five years at \$11k/y. Which of these researchers is likely to have better HQP numbers at renewal time five years from now?
The experience of 2011 appellant Ia is also a bit strange. After a long run of celebrated research funded at the \$40k/y level, this researcher’s funding level was dropped in 2011 to \$15k/y. That outcome was successfully appealed and the 2012 outcome was \$35k/y.
The 2011 appeals by 1d, 2d, 3d, and 4d were all turned down so these researchers are locked in at relatively low funding levels for the next five years.
NSERC deviated from standard policy (a “pilot program”) in their handling of the 2011 appeals of Toronto mathematicians. Toronto’s appeals were evaluated by multiple appeals advisers while appeals from other universities were evaluated by one. There is evidence² showing that Toronto appeals were denied even when one of the appeals advisers advocated for granting the appeal.

Consistent Results on Appeals Cases show 2011 was Anomalous

Proposals by three Toronto researchers were evaluated in both the 2011 and 2012 competitions. The outcomes for these proposals provide a comparison³ between the accuracy of the merit evaluations by the 2011 and 2012 Evaluation Groups and bin-to-funding assignment by the Executive Committee and NSERC staff. Here is the data, including the percentage adjustment from 2011 to 2012:

These three cases provide further evidence, consistent with the message in the public statement signed by over 300 Canadian researchers, that the 2011 evaluations were anomalous. Despite the consensus opinion from the Canadian math/stats community, a public message from a majority of the 2011 Evaluation Group, and advice from top administrators that the 2011 anomalies required an altered appeals process, NSERC chose not to reevaluate the scientific merit of proposals when considering whether to grant or deny an appeal. The grounds for a successful appeal required evidence of administrative errors; evidence of error in merit evaluation was not considered germane.

The Math-NSERC Liaison Committee is collecting data from department chairs about the 2012 competition for Section 1508. It might turn out that 2012 will be viewed as more consistent with expectations, a more accurate evaluation compared to 2011. This would be encouraging. However, the unsuccessful 2011 Toronto “pilot program” appellants (researchers 1d, 2d, 3d, 4d) face the next five years with inadequate funding to support their research programs.

Footnotes:

The names of the faculty members are suppressed. The 2012 applicants will be referenced with codes A, B, C, …, H; 2011 applicants (without successful appeal) will be referenced using 1, 2, …, 7. The appended small case letters indicate whether the researcher had an appeal granted (a), an appeal denied (d), or was a new applicant (n).
This evidence is contained in the reports of the appeals advisers provided to the appellants by NSERC and also in documents obtained by some of the appellants through formal requests under the Access to Information Act.
It would be useful to know the data (number, success rate, basis for granting) for Discovery Grant appeals submitted to NSERC over the past few years. As far as I can tell, NSERC does not provide this data.

Anticipating the 2012 NSERC Discovery Grants Competition Results

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 18:50:38 +0000

2011 Discovery Grants Competition Aftermath

Anomalies in the results of the 2011 NSERC Discovery Grants competition provoked a flurry of activity nearly one year ago. My blog post from April last year reported on surprising results for several of my colleagues at Toronto. An email flurry among Canadian mathematicians culminated in a late April public statement which was eventually signed by 336 Canadian researchers, including 35 Fellows of the Royal Society and 27 Canada Research Chairs. In late May, a majority of the Evaluation Group for Section 1508 released a public letter to NSERC President Suzanne Fortier reporting on a “lack of fairness”, a “lack of transparency” and that their “confidence in the program, as currently administered, is regrettably shaken”. President Fortier gave a presentation to the Canadian Mathematical Community at the Summer CMS Meeting. President Fortier’s slides have not been released but there are notes and rebuttals by Walter Craig. Claims of grade inflation have also been analyzed.

Toronto Math Appeals of 2011 Results

Last May, seven Toronto mathematicians submitted appeals of their 2011 results. As far as I can determine, NSERC does not provide statistics on the number of appeals but seven math appeals was unprecedented from Toronto. Appeals are normally resolved within two to three months. As of late September, the decisions on the appeals were not yet announced. Toronto Math made email and telephone inquiries asking that decisions be made soon since successful appellants would need time to prepare new proposals in advance of the November 1 submission deadline.

Email correspondence revealed that Toronto’s appeals were handled differently than those from other universities. In particular, NSERC’s Isabelle Blain informed me that Toronto’s appeals were processed through a “pilot” program involving two or more appeals advisers. Three of the appeals decisions were announced in late September and the remaining four appeals were announced on October 19, 2011: 2 of 7 appeals were granted. The good news for the successful applicants was bittersweet since it set in motion a rushed effort to prepare proposals for the 2012 competition. Unfortunately, the reports from the appeals advisers for one of the successful appellants could not be consulted while preparing the 2012 proposals since they were not provided by NSERC until after the submission deadline. Toronto appeals were rejected in circumstances when one or more of the appeals advisers advocated for granting the appeal. Some Toronto appellants perceive the “pilot” appeals process to have been unfair. Conversations along these lines continue….

Repercussions: Uncertainty, Frugality and HQP

In the wake of the 2011 anomalies, many Toronto mathematicians who face renewal of their NSERC Grant in 2012, 2013 and even in 2014 are hesitant to commit funds toward hiring postdocs or toward training graduate students. Uncertainty has provoked frugality. Running a successful, even world leading, research program is no longer sufficient to justify an NSERC Discovery Grant. The new evaluation metrics, introduced by NSERC in 2009, require evidence that the principal investigator is successful at training highly qualified personnel (HQP). Taking frugal actions now will limit HQP production over the next few years resulting in a lower or zero grant next time: a vicious cycle which obstructs research advancement and training of young investigators. With the goals of breaking this cycle and maintaining the research vibrancy postdocs bring, the Department of Mathematics at Toronto has raised its funding support level (by 33%) for postdoctoral hires.

Looking Forward: Continued Instability

The 2012 Discovery Grants Competition results will be announced in the next week or two. Hearsay and anecdotal reports about the evaluation process have been reassuring. The Evaluation Group received recommendations jointly authored by the Long Range Plan Committee Chair Nancy Reid and the Math-NSERC Liaison Committee Chair Walter Craig. Similar recommendations were made in a December letter by a group of physicists to President Fortier. The Long Range Plan should help heal the rifts between the mathematics and statistics communities of Canada when it is released later this year. There are reasons to be optimistic in the short term.

In the intermediate term, there is likely to be continued instability with the peer review system at NSERC. Despite the 2011 anomalies for math and the ensuing kerfuffle, receiving similar complaints and suggestions for improvements by physicists, and faced with public criticisms by astronomers, chemists and engineers, NSERC staff insists that the new system is working well. The new evaluation system, the “conference model” with its “bins” and HQP touchstone, was introduced in 2009 and will be the subject of a five year review in 2014. Whether led by current or future NSERC staff, or by an energized scientific community, I anticipate substantial changes, and therefore instabilities, to the peer review process at NSERC in 2014 or 2015.

Shrinking Funds for Basic Research

Beyond the fairness of the evaluation process, there is the issue of shrinking federal investment in basic research. According to NSERC's 2010-2011 tables, expenditures on Discovery have been flat to decreasing when viewed in constant 2000 dollars over the past decade (data taken from Table 1). In contrast, the total NSERC budget has grown with the expansion occurring in programs aimed at commercialization rather than basic research.

Meanwhile, strategic recruitment leveraged by the CRC and CERC programs has increased the number of faculty submitting Discovery Grant applications (data taken from Table 27). Over the same time period, the number of successful applications has decreased (data taken from Table 27).

Table 50 shows that mathematicians do not really benefit from programs outside of the Discovery Grants. Mathematics, the “poetry of logical ideas”, is profoundly relevant to various industries. Canada’s research mathematicians need to find ways to share their expertise and leverage their Discovery Grant funds the way other disciplines do.

NSERC Rethink: Engage Grants Illustrates Mission Drift

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 19:28:13 +0000

The Globe and Mail recently posted a story entitled “Building partnerships between businesses and universities” which highlights NSERC’s Engage Grants Program. Following the article, there appears an attribution I don’t usually see in The Globe:

Content in this section is provided in partnership with the Business Development Bank of Canada. BDC provides entrepreneurs with financing, venture capital and consulting services. To find out more go to BDC.ca.

I found this a bit strange so I followed the link and found the mission statement of BDC.ca:

Our mission Help create and develop Canadian businesses through financing, venture capital and consulting services, with a focus on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Our vision Accelerate entrepreneurs' success.

In fact, we’re solely dedicated to Canadian entrepreneurs. We have a nationwide team helping more than 29,000 businesses reach their full potential.

The Engage program is now three years old. NSERC President Suzanne Fortier has characterized the program as providing funds for academic-industrial “first dates”. The Globe article contains an anecdote on one (reportedly among ~~240~~ to date [Correction: there are now over 1000 Engage grants.]) academic researcher who is having fun “making lane changes”. NSERC Vice President for Partnership Programs Janet Walden’s assertion that the program is “win-win” for business and academic sectors is not justified with any statistics or summary facts about the program as a whole. Not everyone sees it this way but the businesses helped by BDC probably like the Engage program a lot. Who wins?

[caption id=“attachment_670” align=“alignright” width=“261” caption=“NSERC President Suzanne Fortier”][/caption]

Consider the details of the Engage program:

NSERC provides $25K of taxpayer funds to pay for a six-month research and development project between a university researcher and a company already involved in research and development.
The company is not required to invest any money on the project.
Any intellectual property developed by the project is owned by the company. There is no direct return back to taxpayers on their investment.
NSERC has not revealed conversion rates of Engage grants into Collaborative Research and Development program grants. Why?

Meanwhile, ~~240~~ 1000 Engage grants, each costing $25K, bleed 6 25 Million dollars away from other NSERC programs like the Discovery Grants which support basic research by Canada Research Chairs and other university researchers. NSERC’s foray into business development should be contrasted with the Council’s original mission:

"...encourage excellence in research; provide a base of advanced knowledge in the universities; assist in the selective concentration of research activities; aim for a regional balance in scientific capability; maintain a basic capacity for research training; encourage curiosity-oriented research; and encourage research with a potential contribution to national objectives. ... these objectives are intended ... to ensure long-term coherence in the federal system of university research granting." (Honourable Hugh Faulkner, then Minister of State for Science and Technology, during the opening comments of the second reading of Bill C-26.)

[caption id="attachment_637" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Panel Chair Tom Jenkins, Minister of State (Science and Technology) Gary Goodyear, Arvind Gupta, Monique F. Leroux and Nobina Robinson (Not shown are panel members David Naylor and Bev Dahlby)"][/caption]

With Engage and other programs aimed at building academic-industrial partnerships, the current leadership has drifted away from NSERC’s core mission. This “mission drift” at NSERC was highlighted (see page 128 in the PDF version or follow this link) in the Review of Federal Support to Research and Development produced by the federal R&D panel chaired by Tom Jenkins (who was recently appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada):

The granting councils have played a pivotal role in developing both talent and ideas for Canada’s innovation agenda. Their core raison d’être has been and remains investigator-initiated research of both a basic and applied nature, and each needs to continue to be generously supported. However, there has been mission drift for the granting councils, as they have responded to pressure from government to be more business facing.

By excogitating the recommendations of the expert panel report, Minister Goodyear and Prime Minister Harper are poised to lead Canada’s research and development enterprise back to the launch pad: basic research; dream big.

2011 Winter CMS Town Hall Notes

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 19:26:51 +0000

The 2011 Winter CMS Meeting took place this past weekend. On Sunday (2011-12-11), there was a CMS Town Hall meeting. The discussion was led by a panel consisting of Long Range Plan Committee Chair Nancy Reid, CMS President Jacques Hurtubise, and CMS Director Johan Rudnick (who was partially obscured by a poinsetta). Attendees to the town hall meeting were fed a free lunch.

Long Range Plan Update

Nancy gave a status update on the long range plan. She reported that the committee met in October and is in the process of writing. They hope to have a draft version of the report available in late February with a target goal of final publication in June 2012. Nancy also reported that she and Math-NSERC Liaison Committee Chair Walter Craig had sent a letter of recommendations to NSERC for this year's Discovery Grants competition. The letter is posted here and also on the LRP web space.

Nancy reported that the overall federal funding envelope for math/stats through NSERC (Discovery grants, Institute, …) is around $21M/y. To function effectively, the Institutes require additional funds from the Provinces and other partners. To avoid the departures of talented mathematicians from Canada as forecasted last year, there is a need for more funding. I asked if the LRP report would contrast the circumstances faced by Canada’s financially threatened math/stats community with the recent <a href="/tag/perimeter/">$100M ( $50M federal, $50M Ontario) gift to the Perimeter Institute. Nancy replied that the LRP report will only address funds granted through NSERC and will not comment on grants given through other sources.

Persistent Concerns about NSERC and Discovery Grants

The open discussion revealed that there remain serious concerns within the Canadian mathematical community about NSERC and the Discovery Grants program. Nancy reported that consultations with NSERC have “not always been easy.” Brett Stevens expressed the view that the weight given to the training of highly qualified personnel in evaluating the merit of proposals was problematic. Nancy relayed that these issues had been raised with Isabelle Blain. Based on those conversations, Nancy predicted that no substantial review of the new system would take place until 2014.

According to Nancy, NSERC staff claims that no discipline other than mathematics has complained about the new peer review system. I relayed that there have been reports by computer scientists and physicists of troubles with the outcomes of their recent competitions. NSERC might not be aware of the troubles in other disciplines but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Through the Liaison Committee, the LRP process, the Institutes, meetings of chairs, trans-Canada research collaborations, and meetings of the CMS and SSC, the math/stats community in Canada has strong communications channels. These channels allowed us to see the anomalies in the 2011 outcome through a national lens. I wonder if other disciplines would see problems with the conference model if they too had a wide enough vantage point on the outcome of their recent Discovery Grants competitions.

There was some discussion about how NSERC has moved funds away from the Discovery Grants program into a potpourri of programs supporting commercialization and academic-industrial partnerships. As mentioned in the 2007 report of the International Review panel (which led to the new peer review system), pure mathematics is unfairly punished when basic research funds are redirected toward short term commercialization goals.

Eddie Campbell isolated an issue that our community must confront. Should NSERC fund lots of smaller grants or fewer larger grants? There is a fixed amount of money in the federal budget for mathematics. How should those funds be spread out? Jacques mentioned that “spreading peanut butter” is a frequent metaphor used in discussions around this issue.

Transparency

I highlighted Minister Tony Clement’s call for federal government transparency. With this background, I asked Nancy if the LRP could arrange for the release of NSERC President Suzanne Fortier’s slides from her public presentation at the Summer 2011 CMS meeting. Nancy replied that the LRP has the slides but has been instructed not to circulate them. Nancy also reported that the LRP had requested data regarding the appeals numbers and success rate. She said the success rate is running around 25% but the LRP had not yet received the requested data. In light of Mr. Clement’s call for federal government transparency, I wonder why the data presented publicly by NSERC’s President to the Canadian Mathematical Society and requested by the LRP remains concealed from public view.

Immigration Policy Concerns

David Pike expressed frustration that Canada’s immigration rules prevent international graduate students from seeking permanent residency. I didn’t quite understand the details. David reported that the policy is seriously affecting his finishing PhD student who wishes to stay in Canada but will probably be forced to leave. Canada and the provinces invest heavily in the training of international graduate students. David reported that current immigration policy prevents Canada and the provinces from benefiting from this investment since these highly qualified graduates are often required to leave after earning their PhD.

The CMS town hall meeting was a great opportunity for discussion among members of the Canadian math/stats community. I look forward to the LRP report and am grateful for all the hard work that Nancy Reid and the committee have done.

Innovation and the Disrespect of Scientific Invention

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 19:23:22 +0000

“Innovation is the creation of better or more effective products, processes, technologies, or ideas that are accepted by markets, governments, and society. Innovation differs from invention in that innovation refers to the use of a new idea or method, whereas invention refers more directly to the creation of the idea or method itself.”

Dean Roger Martin of the Rotman School of Business, an iThinker pondering Canada’s innovation gap, writes in a recent op-ed piece that

“The first lesson is that commercial success and impact is more about innovation than about invention. Invention is the creation of some new-to-the-world technology, molecule, material, or formula. It is typically the product of the curiosity of a scientist. It can be pretty earth-shattering when it is electricity or insulin. But it can be pretty irrelevant when it is a technology in search of a user.”

The laser, created by scientist inventors A. Schawlow and C. Townes at Bell Labs, was dismissed as “a solution looking for a problem.” Eventually, this seemingly irrelevant technology found applications in fiber optic communications systems, in semiconductor device fabrication and in powerpoint presentations at leading business schools worldwide. Bell Labs invested heavily in curiosity driven basic research by scientists. Scientist inventors, free to pursue their potentially irrelevant curiosities, eventually produced important technologies:

The Transistor (invented by scientists John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley)
Unix Operating System (invented by scientists Ken Thompson, the late Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan a U. Toronto alum and others)
Electromagnetism (understood by James Clerk Maxwell and Richard Feynman)
Global Positioning System (built on Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity)

These inventions by scientists are the foundational elements Mr. Jobs “cobbled together to make the Macintosh, iPod, iPhone and iPod”. Without them, Apple’s innovative product line would simply not exist.

Basic scientific research is the soil in which innovation grows.

Anticipating the Report of Canada's Expert R&D Panel

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 20:58:36 +0000

I was happy today to learn that Canada Post issued a stamp honoring my Toronto colleague and Nobel Laureate John Polanyi. The stamp is issued as part of the celebration of the International Year of Chemistry. This bit of good news tempered the alarming developments across the ocean where actions by the EPSRC appear to be destroying the scientific fabric of the UK. Here in Canada, despite an anomalous 2011 Discovery Grants competition for math/stats and recent news that some of my colleagues’ appeals were rejected, I hope to soon hear good news from the Expert R&D Panel which will hopefully reset Canada’s priorities and shore up support for basic research. The original vision of NSERC (supporting research at universities) is quite different from today’s gallimaufry of industrial Research Partnership Programs which are taking away money from Discovery Grants and basic research in general.

The report of the six member R&D panel is forecasted to arrive sometime in October. UBC’s Nassif Ghoussoub reports that “all eyes are on” David Naylor, the President of the University of Toronto. Ghoussoub’s post encouraged me to spend some time reviewing some of President Naylor’s opinion pieces looking for insights into his perspectives on research policy. Here are some extractions I found encouraging:

Summer 2011: Meeting Global Challenges

“We cannot afford to fall behind. Higher education and advanced research in today’s world has a massive impact that extends into every other field of human endeavor. And Canada must have universities that can do two related things: conduct the advanced research that will help surmount the grand challenges that humanity now faces, and offer the best and brightest students an education that will help them build a more successful nation and a better world. No university in Canada is better positioned to meet those objectives.”

Spring 2008: The Topography of Innovation

“…governments should fund basic research more generously. From lasers to Teflon, countless economically important advances have piggybacked on basic research. And in regions where Nobel Prize winners congregate in great universities, knowledge-based industries flourish in a wonderfully synergistic relationship.”
“Canadians are efficient at turning dollars into research but inefficient at turning research into dollars. Commercialization is not the enemy of fundamental research; nor is the converse true. However, it is wrong headed to insist that granting councils and research agencies constantly look downstream to the marketplace when their sights are justifiably set upstream on knowledge generation. Instead, we need dedicated commercialization agencies and infrastructure.”

Summer 2009: Universities and the Innovation Economy

“Unfortunately, one still hears grumbling about overspending on “irrelevant” basic research. The last hundred years have shown us time and again that basic research, driven by curiosity and arbitrated by peer review, is absolutely essential to human progress – and its practical impacts are totally unpredictable.”
“We should also be clear about what universities don’t do. Commercialization happens in companies, not in universities. To be sure, universities can collaborate more often and more effectively with industrial partners. We can try to ensure a strong outflow of well-protected intellectual property with interesting potential. And we should promote a culture of civic engagement and entrepreneurship among our students and trainees. The University of Toronto is taking positive action on all those fronts. But the onus in commercialization rests squarely on the private sector.”

I also found a lot of discussion explaining that, on all metrics, Toronto is an outstanding University. President Naylor also presented detailed comparisons showing how American, British (this might have changed recently), and European grants cover the “indirect costs of research” at much higher levels than Canadian grants. Indirect costs are very important but appear to be harder to sell to policy makers than, say, research institutes in vulnerable ridings.

In addition to developing the method of infrared chemiluminescence, Professor Polanyi has made many insightful statements concerning science policy. These three are especially relevant right now:

(Concerning the allocation of research funds) “It is folly to use as one’s guide in the selection of fundamental science the criterion of utility. Not because (scientists)… despise utility. But because. .. useful outcomes are best identified after the making of discoveries, rather than before.”
— Speech to the Canadian Society for the Weizmann Institute of Science, Toronto (2 Jun 1996)
“Faced with the admitted difficulty of managing the creative process, we are doubling our efforts to do so. Is this because science has failed to deliver, having given us nothing more than nuclear power, penicillin, space travel, genetic engineering, transistors, and superconductors? Or is it because governments everywhere regard as a reproach activities they cannot advantageously control? They felt that way about the marketplace for goods, but trillions of wasted dollars later, they have come to recognize the efficiency of this self-regulating system. Not so, however, with the marketplace for ideas.”
— Quoted in Martin Moskovits (ed.), Science and Society, the John C. Polanyi Nobel Lareates Lectures (1995)
“At one time, it would have been thought mistaken to suggest that scientists meddle in politics. Today, it would be shameful to deny that they have this responsibility.”
— Hope lies in the scientific method, The Globe and Mail 2009-05-29

Troublesome Trends at NSERC

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 05:17:03 +0000

I was troubled to learn recently that:

1. NSERC awarded far fewer postdocs and grad student fellowships in 2011 vs. 2010.

The official statistics reveal that NSERC awarded less than half the number of PDFs in 2011 than were awarded in 2010. Master’s awards are down. Doctoral awards are down. NSERC communicated an official explanation in reply to N. Ghousshoub’s post on this news, but the numbers still trouble me.

2. NSERC staff appears to have reallocated funds across disciplines, without consultation.

In the past, changes to NSERC’s investment strategy took place in consultation with the academic scientific research community through reallocation exercises. NSERC President Suzanne Fortier’s reply to the public letter by the math/stats community reports that the reallocation exercise was "determined to be very demanding with limited return" and has been discontinued. It is reassuring that the Ministry of Industry and NSERC have requested input from an expert panel on science performance and research funding. It is unclear what role the report and recommendations from the expert panel will have on NSERC policies. What is clear, in light of the data assembled by N. Ghoussoub, is that NSERC staff has substantially changed their investment portfolio across disciplines over the past five years.

A New Dawn for Math and Stats in Canada

Sat, 21 May 2011 05:53:36 +0000

The recently released 2010 International Review of Mathematical Sciences for the UK has a timely quote for the Canadian statistical and mathematical communities to consider (see page 10):

"A longstanding practice has been to divide the mathematical sciences into categories that are, by implication, close to disjoint. Two of the most common distinctions are drawn between ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ mathematics, and between ‘mathematics’ and ‘statistics’. These and other categories can be useful to convey real differences in style, culture and methodology, but, in the panel’s view, they have produced an increasingly negative effect when the mathematical sciences are considered in the overall context of science and engineering, by stressing divisions rather than unifying principles. Furthermore, such distinctions can create unnecessary barriers and tensions within the mathematical sciences community by absorbing energy that might be expended more productively."

Yesterday, a majority of the Evaluation Group (1508) which adjudicated the 2011 NSERC Discovery Grants competition posted a public letter to NSERC President Suzanne Fortier. This letter finally provides some official insights into the 2011 competition that I publicly requested on April 11. The letter also validates the concerns expressed by the public statement by the Math NSERC Liaison Committee from April 26 which has (so far) been signed by:

Yesterday's letter clarifies the responsibilities of the Evaluation Group, its Executive Committee, and NSERC staff in evaluating the proposals and assigning dollar amounts. We now know that the Executive Committee was allowed to give different dollar amounts to proposals with equal merit. Stats proposals were given more money than math proposals despite being evaluated as having equal merit. We also know that proposals evaluated in 2010 were given substantially larger money amounts than equal merit proposals in 2011. These outcomes are unfair. The 2011 aftermath provides an opportunity for NSERC to evaluate and improve the new evaluation system used for adjudicating the Discovery Grants competition.

The statisticians on the Evaluation Group did not sign yesterday’s public letter to the NSERC President.

The unequal treatment of statistics and mathematics during the 2011 competition has provoked a rift between these two communities of Canadian researchers. These two communities were forced to merge by NSERC, against the wishes of the statistics community, in 2009. Although the statisticians on the Evaluation Group did not sign yesterday’s statement, three notable signatories to the public statement by the Math NSERC Liaison Committee are prominent statisticians:

President of the Statistical Society of Canada
Chair of the Research Committee of the Statistical Society of Canada
Chair of the Long Range Plan for the merger of math and stats.

Now is the time for mathematicians and statisticians to collaborate to improve the system for distributing federal investments in research. Let's work together to avoid being divided and conquered.

NSERC Peer Review System is Broken for Mathematics

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 05:49:49 +0000

Anomalous results of the 2011 NSERC Discovery Grants competition in mathematics have provoked a loss of confidence in the NSERC peer review system. To avoid a substantial loss of Canada’s scientific talent, which has been enhanced through the Canada Research Chairs program and other spectacular hiring over the past ten years, scientific policymakers need to quickly fix the broken peer review system. In the absence of an effective peer review process setting the strategy for research investment, Canada will miss out on the rewards made over the past decade’s recruitment of scientific talent.

What is happening in other sciences? Anecdotal reports from the following sources suggest the anomalies are not restricted to the math department at Toronto:

Toronto: MATH, CHM, EEB, PHY, STA, Engineering
UBC: CS, MATH
Queens: MATH

What happened to other disciplines? I’d like to know but NSERC won’t reveal the 2011 data until after the federal election. I’d like to hear from other scientific disciplines about their confidence in the recently transformed NSERC peer review system.

In 2007, NSERC commissioned a review by an international committee culminating in this report. (Please find my annotated version here and a marked up version of the NSERC Management response to the 2007 International Review Committee Report.) This report made recommendations leading to fundamental changes in the peer review process for all disciplines starting in 2009. The implementation of these changes (involving the so-called conference model and binning system) and other forces have provoked a loss of confidence in the peer review process at NSERC among mathematicians at Toronto, and across Canada.

Toronto Math Results are Anomalous

The results (names omitted) of the 2011 NSERC Discovery Grants Competition for the Department of Mathematics at the University of Toronto are anomalous:

Professor A. \$29k/y to \$18k/y
Professor B. 40 to 15
Professor C. 42 to 30 to 42 to 18
Professor D. 26 to 18
Professor E. 40 to 40
Professor F. 38 to 47
Professor G. 0 to 0
Professor H. 15 to 13

(The numbers represent annual research grant amount in dollars for the past 5 years and the new number for the next 5 years. For a description about how mathematician’s use these funds, go here.)

About Professor C.

Consider the case of CMS award winning Professor C. In 2010, this researcher’s grant was cut from 42 down to 30. After an appeal, the grant was reinstated for one year back to 42. In this year’s competition, one year after the appeal, NSERC drops it to 18, a 57% cut. Meanwhile, Professor C’s frequent collaborator (each had more than 50% overlap of their research with the other during 2006-2011), Professor K., received 45 staying at 100% of the previous level in this competition. Will the real opinion of NSERC on Professor C’s research please stand up? Professor C’s story is quite similar to Don Fraser’s personal account. (Within the conference model, I understand that a different group of only 5 experts may have reviewed the proposals of Professors C and K. This remark can account for the inconsistency but reveals aspects of larger issues that need to be fixed.)

About Professor B.

Imagine running a successful research operation (success, former students get awards, 13 major pubs in 2006-2011) for the past five years like Professor B using 45K/y. Students are in the pipeline; postdoc candidates have been scouted; Professor B has new ideas. NSERC rewards this person with a drop from 45 down to 18, a 60% cut. This researcher is confused with the outcome: “What did I change? What should I have done differently?”

About Professor G.

This person is a (perhaps the) world leading expert on a substantial research area. It seems this person, despite spectacular research success, is unworthy of a Discovery Grant because they don’t produce enough students. It is as though Canada has a sports car and they don’t put tires on it.

Secondary Effects Scenarios

Mathematicians, of international calibre, with a steady research production stream and surrounded by young researchers have had their grants slashed by nearly 60% during the 2011 NSERC Discovery Grants Competition.

Now, imagine you are an assistant professor in Canada. You might have nice support right now, like a Sloan or an ERA. You are building a research group, spending money on HQP, scouting talent. But your funding has a finite time horizon and the Discovery Grants look unstable, unpredictable. So, would you leave Canada if you could? Fix NSERC or the young talent will leave Canada.
Now, imagine you are a recently recruited Canada Research Chair: if you just concluded that your junior faculty member might be wise to leave Canada, how do you see your department in 10 years? Would you leave Canada if you could? Fix NSERC or the CRCs will leave Canada.

The system is broken and needs to be fixed.

There are (at least) two main problems:

Math in Canada is treated unfairly compared to other disciplines
The Peer Review system is broken

Math in Canada is treated unfairly

The main problem with mathematics funding in Canada is the amount invested is too low. I’ve written about this before. Consider the data from 2009 of NSERC Discovery Grants (2010 is similar, 2011 is not available) over the disciplines:

The average math and stats grant is $20K/y while the average over all disciplines is $41K/y. Why is it that the average scientist in Canada can expect more than double the amount a Canadian mathematician can expect? Keep in mind that Discovery Grants are primarily used to fund research personnel not expensive labs.

David Wehlau’s data (posted and discussed here) reveals the trend: over the past twenty years, mathematics investment as a percentage of the total amount in Discovery Grants funding has declined from nearly 4% down to 2%. Math has received less and less funding compared to other disciplines. This subtle reallocation needs to be abruptly reversed.

The unfairness then multiplies. Consider the following snippet from the 2007 international review report: Other disciplines are benefitting more from other industrially targeted NSERC programs and other sources compared to pure mathematicians. NSERC views Discovery Grants as grant-in-aid: a precursor grant leading to other sources of funds. The international review committee reports that is not the case for mathematics AND mathematicians receive on average less than half the funds received by other scientists. This is an implicit funding reallocation away from mathematics toward other disciplines and is unfair.

Broken Peer Review System

The outcome of the 2011 competition, and consistent reports (like Don Fraser’s) from the past two years, have provoked a loss of confidence in the peer review system at NSERC. To rebuild trust and avoid the departure of talented scientists, the mathematics community of Canada needs to know what happened in 2011. We need to understand why the peer review system produced the 2011 funding allocations.

There has been considerable chatter in the mathematics community about the 2011 competition. However, we need people with official roles to speak officially at this time. In addition to the forthcoming data from NSERC, I hope that Section 1508, the Mathematics and Statistics Evaluation Committee will explain the 2011 evaluation process and actively participate in discussions leading to an improved system that regains the confidence of mathematicians and statisticians working in Canada. What happened? How can we fix it?

Vannevar Bush

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 05:41:18 +0000

Vannevar Bush was the inventor of government investment in research innovation. He was founder of the US National Science Foundation, founder of Raytheon, main organizer of the Manhattan Project which influenced Berkeley leading to Silicon Valley, etc. Here is a timely extract from his letter to President Roosevelt entitled Science: the endless frontier:

Five Fundamentals
There are certain basic principles which must underlie the program of Government support for scientific research and education if such support is to be effective and if it is to avoid impairing the very things we seek to foster. These principles are as follows:

Whatever the extent of support may be, there must be stability of funds over a period of years so that long-range programs may be undertaken.

The agency to administer such funds should be composed of citizens selected only on the basis of their interest in and capacity to promote the work of the agency. They should be persons of broad interest in and understanding of the peculiarities of scientific research and education.

The agency should promote research through contracts or grants to organizations outside the Federal Government. It should not operate any laboratories of its own.

Support of basic research in the public and private colleges, universities, and research institutes must leave the internal control of policy, personnel, and the method and scope of the research to the institutions themselves. This is of the utmost importance.

While assuring complete independence and freedom for the nature, scope, and methodology of research carried on in the institutions receiving public funds, and while retaining discretion in the allocation of funds among such institutions, the Foundation proposed herein must be responsible to the President and the Congress. Only through such responsibility can we maintain the proper relationship between science and other aspects of a democratic system. The usual controls of audits, reports, budgeting, and the like, should, of course, apply to the administrative and fiscal operations of the Foundation, subject, however, to such adjustments in procedure as are necessary to meet the special requirements of research.

Basic research is a long-term process - it ceases to be basic if immediate results are expected on short-term support. Methods should therefore be found which will permit the agency to make commitments of funds from current appropriations for programs of five years duration or longer. Continuity and stability of the program and its support may be expected (a) from the growing realization by the Congress of the benefits to the public from scientific research, and (b) from the conviction which will grow among those who conduct research under the auspices of the agency that good quality work will be followed by continuing support.

Rotman Dean to Government: Give the basic research funding to business schools not scientists

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 05:38:26 +0000

Dean Roger Martin’s remarks in the Globe and Mail yesterday threaten Canada’s intellectual infrastructure and therefore merit the attention of all Canadians, especially policymakers planning the upcoming federal budget and researchers in Canada’s universities. Amazingly, he asserts:

“What makes a country prosperous is not investment in science and technology. It is businesses producing high paying jobs by having unique products and processes that a customer needs.”

Who does he think creates those products and processes? Business majors? His observation will come as a shock to the Chinese, who are working hard to build a competitive modern economy by investing heavily their research resources in the basic sciences and engineering in their universities, not in business schools. They know these investments will create the industries of the future, just as they have for the west in the past.

What is amazing about Martin’s claim is that virtually all of the “high paying jobs” in industries with “unique products and processes” – those leading edge industries like communications technology, pharmaceuticals, bio-technology, etc. that Martin so casually dismisses, have products that are the result of investment in university-based research in science and technology.
In the United States, Silicon Valley, which houses many of the companies he says are now led by CEOs with business degrees, was created by scientists and engineers from Stanford and the University of California.
Indeed, it would be difficult to identify a single industry today that was not based on a scientific or technological innovation of the past.
Business does not create business; creative innovation creates business.

After claiming that Canadian business schools are broke ($200M Campaign, New building), Martin cites statistics comparing the percentage of students in a discipline versus the percentage of tri-council research funding given to that discipline. Martin argues that the percentage of students in a discipline should equal (or at least influence) the percentage of tri-council funding given to that discipline. This is a terrible idea. Martin appeals here to the value of fairness (“In business….it’s a 10 to 1 cut”). If taken seriously, Martin’s reallocation plan restricts policymakers from defining the government’s research investment portfolio; it prevents them from making targeted investment decisions. The plan potentially forces money to be poured into disciplines which happen to be popular with undergraduates at the time (whether frivolous or not). Science policy should not be determined by a popularity contest among undergraduate major choices. I prefer the old ways to think: scientifically, strategically.

Roger Martin’s viewpoint will hurt Canada in the short and long term if taken seriously now. Basic scientific research has produced (among other things):

electricity (why you aren't in the dark, can take an elevator in a high rise, and have clean laundry)
vaccines (partly why you are not already dead)
transistors (performing the basic functions on which computers are built, enabling the internet)
encryption (why you can safely make financial transactions online and make other secure communications)
combustion engines (how your car generates power for motion)
financial derivatives (so that insurance companies and banks can prepare for risks)
search engines (how we manage information overload on the internet)

What percentage of the workforce relies on these developments? In contrast, what basic elements of the modern economy can be attributed to MBAs? (Perhaps MBAs can claim to have invented mortgage backed securities and credit default swaps leading to to the financial meltdown of 2008- 2009?)

Martin highlights a list of technology companies (Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Cisco and Intel) and reports that many of their CEOs have MBAs. Look up the history of these companies and you will find:

Bill Hewlett and David Packard were electrical engineers.
Microsoft
- Bill Gates was a math major/computer scientist at Harvard before founding Microsoft.
- Paul Allen also studied computer science.
- Steve Ballmer majored in mathematics and economics.
Apple
- Steve Wozniak is a computer scientist and an electrical engineer.
Cisco
- Len Bosack started as a computer scientist.
- Sandra Lerner has a Bachelor’s degree in political science, a master’s degree in econometrics and a master’s degree in statistics and computer science.
Intel
- Gordon Moore PhD in Chemistry and minor in Physics.
- Robert Noyce Ph.D. in physics
Same story for google (Sergey Brin is a computer scientist/mathematician, Larry Page is a computer scientist).
Same for facebook.
Same for Research in Motion, ….

MBA CEOs may find efficient ways to bring widgets to the market and make a profit in the process. But the widgets are invented by scientists and engineers through basic research targeting science and engineering, not business education or business research. Business majors and MBAs are important in the operations of businesses that create new products, so business education is important. But to suggest that it is primarily responsible for new products and innovations creating business is just plain wrong. Misconceptions about the impact and role of basic research funding by business leaders may be one of the largest obstructions currently contributing to Canada’s innovation gap.

The challenges we face in Canada, and as human beings on earth, require new ideas. The long research lines of science (pioneered by Galileo, Newton, Gauss, Euler, Darwin, Riemann, Einstein, Curie, Schrödinger,…,Banting, Polanyi,…) have consistently produced innovation and prosperity, and therefore merit vigorous and consistent government funding.

Mathematics Discovery Grants are Insufficient and Broken

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 06:35:15 +0000

Beginning this academic year, I have served the Department of Mathematics as the Associate Chair [Research]. The principal responsibility of this position is to administer the hiring process, for tenure stream and postdoctoral appointments. I also recently served on the Connaught Physical Science Review Panel which reviews applications for Connaught funds and adjudicates the McLean Award. Serving on the Connaught Panel has given me a perspective on the research climate in fields outside of mathematics. Metaphorically, these responsibilities have required me to look up from my research papers and out the window at the infrastructure supporting researchers at UofT. I am troubled by what I have seen:

Here is a table generated by NSERC showing the Discovery Grants (DG) data across disciplines.

Discovery Grants are Insufficient

On average, Canadian mathematicians receive about $20K/y to sustain their research program. This post by Izabella Laba explains how mathematicians typically use this money at UBC. As part of the planning exercise, I suggest we consider how much money a mathematician needs to run a research program. Simple considerations show that $20k is insufficient.

At Toronto, faculty are encouraged to contribute one quarter of their NSERC DG to support graduate students. This amounts to $6K from a typical $20K NSERC DG.
Faculty pay some incidental expenses related to computing infrastructure costs, printing, etc. Let's suppose these total about $1K.
Collaborative mathematical research requires travel to bring the coworkers together. A typical research visit requires an airfare purchase and a hotel room. Each research visit costs between \$1K and \$2K.
The development of graduate students and postdocs into researchers often requires conference participation. The associated travel costs are frequently paid using the advisor's Discovery Grant. Local expenses for sponsored graduate students are often paid by the conference. Each field trip by a graduate student or postdoc costs about $500, sometimes more if the conference is outside of North America.

What does minimal research activity look like? What does it cost? Minimal research activity might involve, say, three to four research visits over the calendar year, and one graduate student research field trip. These might add up to $4K.

So, a minimally active researcher with a typical research grant of $20K spends $6K supporting a graduate student, $1K on incidentals, and $4K on research visits leaving $9K.

At Toronto, postdoctoral positions require between \$32K and \$40K from faculty research grants. This money is supplemented with a teaching stipend to complete the salary package for the postdoc.

The minimally active mathematician with average funding can barely afford one third of a postdoc. Therefore, it is necessary to combine funds with like-minded colleagues to generate a postdoc position. The need to build funding alliances prevents typical faculty members from choosing the postdoctoral candidate with the most synergy with their research program. Instead, the typical researcher needs to look for a candidate that two of their colleagues will also like enough to spend \$10K or more to have in the department. Instead of recruiting postdocs with potentially explosive overlapping research interests, we make deals just to get someone in the department and hope for some resonance after training the Postdoc on our research topic. Of course, all three faculty members want the person they hire to contribute to their research program. So the Postdoc is encouraged to learn background materials in three (hopefully related) areas which are not strongly linked to their thesis area. Except in rare cases with unexpected synergy, this arrangement is a failure factory.

Mid-Career Funding Gap

Early research awards (ERA, Sloan, etc.) fund research activities by new faculty. These opportunities are restricted by a time horizon typically around 10 years after the PhD. Young faculty at Toronto with these grants can often solely fund the research component of a Postdoc funding package.

Similarly, eminent senior members of our department with large grants can solely fund postdocs.

Midcareer mathematicians typically must make a deal with their colleagues to assemble the funds to to hire a Postdoc.

Canada’s Discovery Grants funding policies do not adequately support research activity by mathematicians and especially hurts researchers in the middle of their career. Young researchers who win early research awards in Canada are capable of starting a research program. The present funding structure does not allow these emerging mathematicians to fully develop through the mid-Career phase into world class research leaders. Canada has been very effective at recruiting talented young mathematicians during the past decade. When young research stars in Canada start to realize the mid-Career funding gap prevents them from carrying out their research plans, they will leave and go elsewhere.

HQP training is not necessary for spectacular research success.

Why does NSERC require an HQP (Highly Qualified Personnel) component in research plans? I expect the answer has to do with the general goal that the government policies should encourage the training of a highly skilled population. This is a good goal. However, the HQP requirements for Discovery Grants fail to envision the secondary effects of world leading research on the training of future scientists. Consider, for example, the case of Jean Bourgain. Bourgain had one Ph.D student so his HQP production would be viewed as insufficient to merit a Discovery Grant by NSERC. However, Bourgain's advances have created new fields of mathematics where a generation of mathematicians (e.g. Izabella Laba, Wilhelm Schlag, Gigliola Staffilani, Terry Tao ...) has blossomed. The NSERC definition of HQP fails to envision the effects of ground breaking research in the development of future scientists.

Henri Poincaré had five graduate students. John von Neumann only had three students. I wonder if they’d qualify for a Discovery Grant given the highly qualified personnel requirements in the funding formulae? My colleague Victor Ivrii made an historical advance by proving Weyl’s conjecture about the eigenvalues of the Laplacian on a domain. Due to the HQP requirement, Victors’s DG is zero. Similarly, my colleague Michael Goldstein advances the frontier with big results which appear in Annals, Annals (again), Acta, etc. and his efforts are rewarded with a $14K/y NSERC DG. Goldstein’s research excellence has been recognized outside of Ottawa.

In my opinion, the fact that Canada fails to invest in the scholarly activity of its world-class researchers is a disgrace. The Discovery Grants system needs to be fixed.

Research Program Profiles should be Defined

The mathematical community, perhaps through the long range planning exercise, should formulate typical budgets required for mathematician’s operating at different levels. How much money is required to effectively run the research enterprise for a mathematician? Of course, the answer depends upon career stage, level of engagement with students and postdocs, etc. The mathematical community should define funding requirements for a collection of research program profiles (parametrized by quantity and quality, and HQP level ranging through zero, some, to lots of junior collaborator participation in the research). If NSERC wants to put us in bins, mathematicians should define those bins, not NSERC staff, and we should insist on adequate funding to allow Canada's mathematical research community to emerge as world leading. Presently, there are too many government generated obstructions preventing our ascension.

NSERC | James Colliander

NSERC Open Data Exploration

NSERC Open Data Exploration

TODO Set up similar analyses for SSHRC

TODO Set up similar analysis for CIHR

Overview

NSERC Budget

Accumulated Program Investments [1995 - 2016] Top 25

Accumulated Principal Investigator Investments [1995-2016] Top 25

Discovery

Evaluation Groups

Award Amounts

Number of Awards

Bin Frequency

Engage

Budget 2017, Naylor’s review, and the Mathematical Sciences in Canada

Toward Global Science Excellence

Mathematical Scientist's Guide to Innovation Funding Sources in Canada

NSERC Innovation Programs

NSERC Connect

NSERC Engage

Mitacs Innovation Programs

Mitacs Accelerate

Mitacs Elevate

Further Assistance

Canada is Retreating from Investment in Science and Engineering

Canada retreats from Science

Mission Drift

Inadequate Consultation

On Today's NSERC Contact Newsletter Item Regarding Postdocs

On Today’s NSERC Contact Newsletter Item Regarding Postdocs

Canada Restricts Athlete Participation to One Olympic Games per Lifetime

Business Earmarks or Merit Competition: Which is the Better Federal Research Strategy?

Misaligned Incentives in Canadian Science Policy

Why should the government invest in basic research?

Industrial incentive systems are misaligned with basic research

Budget 2012 and the prior decade of mission drift

Canada's Research Policy is Misaligned with Scientist's Incentives

Further Resources

A Report on the 2012 NSERC Discovery Grants Results for Toronto Math

Average Grant Amount (Toronto Math)

Instability Visualized

Consistent Results on Appeals Cases show 2011 was Anomalous

Anticipating the 2012 NSERC Discovery Grants Competition Results

2011 Discovery Grants Competition Aftermath

Toronto Math Appeals of 2011 Results

Repercussions: Uncertainty, Frugality and HQP

Looking Forward: Continued Instability

Shrinking Funds for Basic Research

NSERC Rethink: Engage Grants Illustrates Mission Drift

2011 Winter CMS Town Hall Notes

Long Range Plan Update

Persistent Concerns about NSERC and Discovery Grants

Transparency

Immigration Policy Concerns

Innovation and the Disrespect of Scientific Invention

Anticipating the Report of Canada's Expert R&D Panel

Troublesome Trends at NSERC

A New Dawn for Math and Stats in Canada

NSERC Peer Review System is Broken for Mathematics

Toronto Math Results are Anomalous

About Professor C.

About Professor B.

About Professor G.

Secondary Effects Scenarios

Math in Canada is treated unfairly

Broken Peer Review System

Vannevar Bush

Rotman Dean to Government: Give the basic research funding to business schools not scientists

Mathematics Discovery Grants are Insufficient and Broken

Discovery Grants are Insufficient

HQP training is not necessary for spectacular research success.

Research Program Profiles should be Defined