It is a pleasure to be here. I will add one thing to what Dr. Fottrell mentioned. The reason that he is happy that I am here is that my grandparents are from Galway. Those roots help form a bond.
I will tell members a little about what we are doing and where we have come in the last two years. I have prepared for them a two-page summary. I will not go through it now, rather I will talk through some of the slides that I have left for members to keep me on track and on time. Everyone will know that Science Foundation Ireland grew out of the technology foresight fund. Last July, the legislation was signed to make Science Foundation Ireland an official body in Ireland. During that process, I was especially pleased to have the privilege of meeting all the political parties and their leaderships. I was both proud of and pleased at the endorsement of Science Foundation Ireland as a concept and encouraged during the debate by the desire of various Deputies and Senators to build a real science foundation for Ireland. I am committed to doing that and to broadening the mandate to bring the excellence that the name has brought to the United States.
Initially we are investing in the fields that underpin the biotechnology and ICT sectors in which Ireland has such a strong advantage. However, over the past year, we have been given the responsibility for the basic research grants programme previously led by Enterprise Ireland in partnership with the HEA. This sub-programme will give us the opportunity to re-examine the investment in science, mathematics, the environment, climate change and geology. We will be considering new ways to connect with other investments that Ireland is making through the Marine Institute and the Geological Survey of Ireland. We have already begun such conversations.
I believe that mathematics is critically important to all areas of science, and we must examine ways to strengthen its position in Ireland in order that it can also support other areas. The Science Foundation Ireland board is international and has 12 members. It is one of the best boards with which I have been associated. It has individuals who are recognised for their achievements in science and engineering in the United States, in particular, and the UK. Those people know well what is needed to create excellence and a brand of excellence in Ireland. Their commitment to and service on behalf of Ireland is very impressive.
Everyone here will know that when Science Foundation Ireland makes an investment, it is really an investment in people. We are building the human capital over the next generation of ideas, companies and university leaders. The secret to the success of the US economy over the last 50 years has been the investment that the National Science Foundation in particular, and perhaps the National Institutes of Health, has made in the university system through a competitive grants system. It found a way to have universities distinguish themselves on the basis of quality and competition. We found - I think that we have found the same in Ireland and elsewhere - that it is very difficult to measure the quality of a university or college. They hardly ever want to be measured directly, and it turns out that competitive research grants generally find a mechanism and way to do that. One finds that institutions with success in competitive research grants for science, engineering and medicine tend to be those that also have outstanding arts, humanities and culture on their campuses. Those things seem to go together. We have a mechanism based on international peer review. That means that those individuals must compete in the global environment with the best and most current ideas and on time. Competition is judged in the same way as a business plan.
The way that one builds the university system to be truly significant and advance the education system for students is to have top-quality researchers and begin to get the students involved in lifelong learning in the laboratory as they go through there. One must create a culture and partnership and break down some of the walls that separate the university community from society at large. At a recent conversation with the Minister, Deputy Noel Dempsey, we advanced a series of conversations examining issues connected with the schools system, with students losing interest in science, and what we might be able to do to work with the Minister and others to advance that. We intend following up those conversations. I found the meeting incredibly constructive and helpful, and there are things that we can and should be doing to look at Ireland in a new way.
I have said in speeches how very important it is that Ireland be fast, focused and flexible. If Ireland builds up a bureaucracy and becomes slow in how it responds to business and educational opportunities, it will have a difficult time competing in the world of the 21st century. In this regard, Ireland's key advantage is its size. People say it is too small. I say that is not right. Smallness is what makes it able to do things that other countries cannot. The effectiveness of the Government system and Departments working together will make that happen as well.
We have to ensure we look at some of the issues that are causing problems in the school system, making students turn off. That is crucial because people are the most important product and the key for the future. We want to brand Ireland, the way Inter-Set has branded the United States research enterprise, as excellent. If one gets an Inter-Set grant in the United States one knows one has achieved something - and so does one's colleagues. One might get a grant from a department in the US and that is appreciated, but the Inter-Set grant is the badge of accomplishment and true excellence. We want to get that type of brand here because we believe it will complement what is going on with the multinationals as well as distinguishing Ireland on the world scene.
It is early days yet. Two years is an early time in terms of building a research culture out of what is primarily a teaching system. However, a couple of events over the past year are encouraging indicators that the progress being made is good and that our vector is correct. Last year I was invited to speak at the Royal Society and to talk about what Ireland was doing in research and how effectively. A week or two later I was invited to speak to a UK parliamentary committee because we had attracted to Ireland probably the best photonics group in the world from the Cambridge area. The entire team had moved to Cork and the UK parliamentary group could not believe that. It had a hearing that I chose not to attend. My colleague, Alistair Glass, who runs the ICT side, attended in my place. He had grown up in London and he went back to tell them some of their problems. The title of his talk, as given him by the UK Parliament was: "What can the UK learn from Ireland about research?" I told Dr. Fottrell of this. People were shocked. They did not think they would ever hear that kind of comment. We have got attention within a short time.
That simple move of this group of people - Dave Carter and his crew - to Cork resulted in an article in the Financial Times, noting that what Ireland was doing was unique. It resulted in an article in Time magazine, which members of the committee may have seen, about the 400,000 European researchers who have moved to the US. Ireland stood out as a place they are starting to come back to. One will see a few other articles in the near future which will indicate there is a turnaround and people are returning to Ireland. The way this is done is through investment in the best people and ideas. The key is to ensure an environment is created that is science-friendly and scientist-friendly. One never backs off on the issue of quality and the need to focus on excellence. If we do that Ireland will be given a unique branding and we will truly attract world class talent.
We have some structural problems in the university system that I would like to talk about at some time in the future. At the high end we are not able to compete as well as we should with the UK or the US because of salary structures, the way appointments are made and matters like that. I do not want to go into that today but I want to highlight an issue and a problem that needs to be addressed to enable us to compete with Cambridge, Harvard and places like that. I believe we should compete with them. It is important to know we are recruiting back to Ireland some distinguished people. Top medical researcher Dr. Dolores Cahill returned from Germany. She ran a Max Planck Institute proteomics programme. Her employers did not believe she would leave to return to Ireland. She did. Dr. Tim O'Brien, who had grown up in Cork, left a major medical facility in the United States to come back to Galway. They did not think he would leave the US to come back. He has done so. I could tell the committee of other similar stories.
To begin to address the pipeline issues, we started a programme by working with the Science Teachers Association over the past year. I went around the country with Dr. Fottrell and other people and talked to teachers, students, local business people and politicians in different cities, about what SFI was trying to do, the investment strategy for Ireland's future and how we might do this together. One of the things I learned was that often teachers, on getting their degrees in college, become disconnected for 20 years or more as science changes. These are proud and smart people, but they have been disconnected. I asked if it would be possible for us to put them in touch with researchers in universities and got them into laboratories in the summer. I thought it was a simple idea, but the endorsement of it was incredibly profound. I talked to the university professors we funded who already had been reviewed and they thought it was a great idea. In about a week's time we will be announcing the funding of some 30 teachers this summer, to bring them into the laboratories where they will meet some of the best researchers in Ireland. They will be there all summer. Next summer they might bring some of their more precocious students with them. They will be able to bring that information to the schoolroom. They can phone if they have a problem and get help and they may get in touch by e-mail as well. There is good resonance there. The Department of Education and Science has strongly endorsed and helped us in this process. We hope to build on this programme in the future, assuming it is successful. We want to start out with a pilot study of about 30 or 40 teachers this year.
IBEC has expressed a strong interest in the programme. It believes it would be good to get teachers connected again. My argument is simple: biology has changed enormously in the last 30 years. If one has not had the chance to participate in this, how can one teach it today? I also want to celebrate and value the importance of teaching. I know how important and critical it is and if we can get one teacher to influence 30 to 100 students, we will have made a huge transformation. I will be pleased to talk more to the committee about this and to have members meet some of the teachers. I am excited about what they will be doing. Some will be learning about web activities and about sensors. They will be taking sensors into the real world and bringing them back to the classroom to have the students involved in the process as well.
We plan to also bring some of the more precocious undergraduate students into the research laboratories this summer and to recruit international students to come to Ireland to get their PhDs. Only yesterday the President of Ireland agreed to name a new programme on behalf of the Office of the President, the young scholar's award. We will have ten rising stars of the Irish research university system who will be designated with the President of Ireland young researcher's award. It will be the most prestigious award we can make it. The award will be used to introduce a type of ten-year track competitive system into the universities.
The future involves us working more closely with IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland in terms of connecting things we do with industry. We have good examples, with Wyeth, HP, Intel etc. We will be announcing others over the next two or three weeks that will surprise and please members of the committee.
We were pleased to go to Europe about two weeks ago as part of a business summit. We have been asked by the European Union and Commission to begin to help them to design a basic research programme for Europe. They are beginning to use SFI as the model for creativity and innovation. Their framework programme is considered bureaucratic and is keeping Europe back. They will be visiting us in two weeks, I believe, to start to explore how SFI can help design programmes for the future of Europe. We will be pleased to help them.
The last slide is about a focus I take with me from my Inter-Set and university experience in the US. There we always had to focus on the bottom line. We had to ensure we did things efficiently. My commitment is to try to get as much money as possible into the hands of the researchers and the students so we can advance Ireland that way and not build up an administrative bureaucracy. We will do things fast, ourselves, and creatively. We will design a neat business environment which will be introduced into the universities within several weeks and we will reduce our bureaucracy on a regular basis, still maintaining high standard rules.
The last chart shows members the distribution of resources we now have in the university community. This is all based on international peer review. I do not believe we have yet reached the stage where one can say which university has reached the peak in terms of being the best. However, within two years this kind of information will tell, on the basis of competition, where the best research institutions are located. In my judgment they will also be the best institutions for education. The best researchers are going to want the best arts and humanities teachers.
We will at least be able to give the committee data, in order that the universities may be measured. We will be talking to the universities about how they use their overheads and measure their performances and putting in place and encouraging new systems. We have begun to talk to the Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Dempsey, about that area as well, in terms of getting better performance for the taxpayer. I thank the Chairman for the privilege of being here.
