Fw: Perspectives (Volume 5, number 3) - Canada Foundation for Innovation

[Richard Plant]

Hello again:

Here is the latest issue of "Perspectives" with at least in one instance,
very very disturbing news. The rest is only mildly so. Is that a sign we
should be optimistic?

Richard Plant

----- Original Message -----
From: "Fedcan" <fedcan at hssfc.ca>
To: <@hssfc.ca>
Sent: Friday, February 08, 2002 2:49 PM
Subject: Perspectives (Volume 5, number 3) - Canada Foundation for
Innovation


> PERSPECTIVES
> An electronic newsletter on research and science policy.
>
> PERSPECTIVES will appear at regular intervals throughout the year and will
> be posted on the Federation web site:
>
http://www.hssfc.ca/english/policyandadvocacy/perspectives/perspectives.html
> Please address your comments and suggestions to Jacqueline Wright,
> Membership Communications Officer, at: jawright at hssfc.ca.
>
> PERSPECTIVES (Volume 5, Number 3)
> February 8, 2002
>
> Editor: Wayne Kondro
>
> Table of contents:
> 1) Introduction
> 2) The Competition
> 3) The Changing Culture
> 4) Institutional Support
> 5) The Matching Dollar Requirement
> 6) Other Trends
>
> INTRODUCTION
> Social Sciences and Humanities Make Breakthrough at Canada Foundation for
> Innovation
> CFI says onus is on universities to advance more social sciences and
> humanities initiatives
>
> History wasn't exactly on their side.
>
> Of the first 971 grants awarded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation
> (CFI), a scant 44 issued to social sciences and humanities researchers. In
> fact, there's been a general impression within the community that crafting
> a CFI application is kind of like sitting in a rocking chair: you look
real
> busy but get nowhere.
>
> But after 16 social sciences and humanities projects received a
> breathtaking total of $42-million in a batch of 280 new CFI awards
> announced late last month, project leaders are suddenly finding themselves
> in the altogether uncommon position of being inundated with resumes.
>
> And now that the community appears to have learned the ropes, CFI
President
> Dr. David Strangway projects an application avalanche. "You start looking
> at this and you realize that it is possible for them to put stuff in and
> succeed. So I hope that this will lead to even more in the future."
>
> "Success feeds on success," adds CFI Senior Vice-President Carmen
Charette.
> "I'm hoping the next time people will look at the results this time and
> they will say,  yeah, there is an opportunity here, let's put in some
> projects'."
>
> Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada (HSSFC) President Dr.
> Patricia Clements says the successes are also a sign that the CFI has
> finally moved to both become more inclusive and understand the unique
> infrastructure needs of the community.
>
> "It's a very positive sign that the board is looking at ways of increasing
> participation. And I take as a kind of a landmark event the funding of the
> large humanities and social sciences projects this time around. It's a
very
> strong sign that the door is open and what's required is uptake and
> imagination."
>
> But universities must be prepared to step through the door, Clements adds.
> "Universities need to take note that the CFI is now giving a very warm
> welcome and very substantial support to excellent projects in the social
> sciences and humanities. I would hope that the CFI will be inviting
> universities to indicate how they plan to integrate the social sciences
and
> humanities into their research plans."
>
> THE COMPETITION
> A total of 440 applications seeking $1.2-billion were submitted in the
> Innovation Fund competition. Of those, 31 applications valued at
> $59-million from projects which principal investigators classified as
> falling within the social sciences and humanities.
>
> Some 51.6% of the social sciences and humanities applications were
> successful, slightly higher than 47.2% average success rate across all
> disciplines. The bulk of applications, about 44%, again came from the
> health sciences, while 22% were from engineering, 10% from environment,
17%
> from other "hard sciences" and 7% from the social sciences and humanities.
>
> The 31 applications represent a "significant" increase in the number of
> applications coming from the social sciences and humanities, said CFI
> Senior Vice-President Carmen Charette. "If you look at data over the last
> three competitions, in 1999, there was really no applications. Next round,
> it was up to 3-4%. Now, it's up to 8-9% of the total funding."
>
> The overall success rate was a few percentage points lower than in
previous
> CFI competitions, but the overall quality was higher, Strangway says.
> "There were projects that were turned down this time that might have
gotten
> through last time."
>
> Proposals in the social sciences and humanities were also marked by their
> "innovative" nature, Strangway adds. "I think (social scientists and
> humanists) are beginning to realize that this thing's for real. Don't just
> pull something out of the bottom drawer. Sit down and think about what you
> really want to do because you might actually be able to do it."
>
> THE CHANGING CULTURE
> There's at least a measure of validity to the notion that the social
> sciences and humanities haven't adequately taken up the CFI challenge in
> the past, says Dr. Geoffrey Rockwell, associate professor of humanities
> computing at McMaster and head of the $6.7-million Text Analysis Portal
for
> Research (TAPoR), which received $2.63-million from the CFI to help
> implement a plan to develop and aggregate software at a site which
> researchers can access through the Internet. It's a sort of "library of
> tools" that researchers can use to explore and manipulate electronic texts
> of Shakespeare, the bible and other great works obtained from digital
> libraries, he says.
>
> "The word  innovation' is very important to the CFI," Rockwell notes. "I
> think a lot of my colleagues, and my temptation initially, was to do what
I
> typically do in research grants, which is first of all, to apply for an
> incremental grant, something that builds on what I did before and sort of
> takes it to the next step, but still applying for money to answer research
> questions."
>
> "Instead, I had to wrap my mind around the idea of a laboratory. To say,
> what physical or virtual space would create a space where myself and my
> colleagues could learn from each other and learn through doing research?"
>
> Yet, it's equally valid to say the CFI itself hasn't exactly made it easy
> for the social sciences and humanities to take up the challenge. Almost
> from the moment the federal government announced the creation of the fund
> in 1997, controversy swirled over whether the social sciences and
> humanities were even eligible and whether definitional criteria were broad
> enough to support the creation of databases, the primary form of
> infrastructure for which the community might apply (see Perspectives, Vol
> 1. No.9).
>
> The conflict convinced many universities to shy away from supporting
social
> sciences and humanities projects as priorities of their long-term research
> plans, which the CFI requires them to file as part of the application
> process. Most institutions were far more wont to throw their weight behind
> biomedical and natural science projects that easily fit CFI criteria
rather
> than risk supporting a social sciences and humanities initiative that
might
> not meet the test.
>
> But after an extensive, multi-year lobbying campaign by the HSSFC, the
> Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council, and several university
> presidents and vice-presidents (research), as well as two successive CFI
> competitions in which the social sciences and humanities fared rather
> poorly, the agency finally took tentative steps to  clarify' its terms of
> reference.
>
> In the spring of 2000, CFI announced that it was re-interpreting its
> mandate to support research infrastructure in  science, health,
engineering
> and the environment' to include "any" science. Strangway posted speaking
> notes on the CFI's web site explicitly articulating CFI's openness to
> social sciences and humanities applications and the agency began hammering
> the message home at a series of thematic workshops held at universities
> across the country.
>
> The CFI has been unfairly tagged as being unreceptive to infrastructure
> applications from the social sciences and humanities, Strangway says.
> Universities are as responsible for the dearth of applications in the
> social sciences and humanities. "We may have been criticized but the
> criticism, in fact, to some extent reflects back on them because thinking
> people who have heard me speak realize that we are open to this kind of
> stuff."
>
> "Remember, we only get what the university proposes."
>
> INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT
> Whatever the tangled web of causality, garnering institutional support for
> social sciences and humanities projects has long been one of the primary
> obstacles faced by many researchers seeking CFI grants.
>
> Yet, according to several recent CFI winners, that's the singularly most
> critical element in pulling together a proposal that has any chance of
> success.
>
> "It's absolutely essential. If you don't have that, you can't do it," says
> Dr. Ruth Phillips, whose UBC Museum of Anthropology team won $17.2-million
> from the CFI to redesign its facilities so that academics and First
Nations
> people could be electronically linked with museums in Europe and the
United
> States through a virtual,  Reciprocal Research Network'.
>
> The wide-ranging $43-million initiative will see the upgrading of display,
> storage and research equipment, as well as the addition of
state-of-the-art
> work stations at which researchers will have access to both multiple
images
> and contextual information about an object. For example, someone studying
a
> First Nations mask could access data about similar masks in the holdings
of
> international museums "or connect to photographs of people wearing or
> dancing with the mask, or who are discussing it in a family or cultural
> group," Phillips says.
>
> It took over two years and over $200,000 to develop the proposal, as well
> as considerable faith on the part of the university that the application
> would ultimately be deemed to fall within CFI parameters, she adds. "But
> they were behind us. They were trying to figure out a way to fit into the
> CFI's priorities and guidelines. Fortunately, our president (Dr. Martha
> Piper) is very interested in collaborations with communities and she saw
> very clearly that this fit into the university's vision statement which
she
> developed when she first came."
>
> Yet that kind of institutional support hasn't exactly been the norm in all
> universities across the country and even now, "varies enormously from
> institution to institution," says University of Ottawa professor of
history
> Dr. Chad Gaffield, head of a team which received $5.21-million from the
CFI
> towards a $13.4-million Canadian Century Research Infrastructure (CCRI)
> project to construct a series of relational databases for the 1911-1951
> censuses and make them available to historians for the mapping of social
data.
>
> "At some institutions, it's evident they have the highest level of
> support," Gaffield says. "But we also know that there are other
> institutions that we wanted to involve in this and word came back that it
> was simply not going to happen."
>
>  As with the anthropology initiative, it took roughly two years and over
> $100,000 to develop the CCRI application, says Gaffield, president of the
> Institute of Canadian Studies and former president of the HSSFC. "It's a
> formidable intellectual and organizational challenge and it's just not
> possible without financial support from foundations or the university's
> central administration."
>
> It also can't be done within the confines of a traditional department,
> Gaffield argues. "The hard sciences and biomedical field figured that out
a
> long time. That's why they do these things through research institutes and
> centers. To build something like this, you've got to crawl and walk before
> you run. You have to build the kind of local infrastructure that then can
> provide the support necessary to do something like this."
>
> The hard reality is that CFI applications are extremely costly to develop,
> Rockwell adds. "But almost every university, whatever they say, has
> frittered away a little pot of money to try to maximize the amount of CFI
> grants they get. So you have to go to your university and say, look, I
need
> help. At the very least I need help putting the application together. Take
> a risk on me. Help me. I found if you come with a track record and you ask
> the right people and point out that other people are getting this and you
> get your dean behind it, usually universities are very supportive."
>
> THE MATCHING DOLLAR REQUIREMENT
> Social scientists and humanists have also long argued that they've been
> disadvantaged in CFI competitions because they can't readily generate 60%
> of project costs from other sources like industry. (The CFI funds a
maximum
> 40%).
>
> But that concern has been partially alleviated as a result of decisions by
> most provincial governments to establish support programs to provide
> matching funds for CFI infrastructure projects. Ontario, Quebec, British
> Columbia, Alberta and Manitoba now have schemes that support between
40-50%
> of total project costs, while universities in the Atlantic provinces have
> access to limited matching funds through the federal Atlantic Canada
> Opportunities Agency or Atlantic Innovation Fund.
>
> That generally means that 20% of a project's costs must be garnered from
> within the university or from external sources like industry.
>
> "That's still a high bar to jump over in our world," Gaffield says.
>
> With direct cash contributions from external sources all but non-existent,
> it has forced applicants to hound partners for  in-kind' contributions
from
> industry partners, like deep discounts on computers from manufacturers.
>
> "But people who produce research computers are used to people from the
> sciences and engineering and medicine coming to them and saying that we
> need something that does serious number-crunching and we need
> co-investment," Rockwell notes.
>
> There are also signs that the CFI is demonstrating more flexibility in
> interpreting the value of in-kind contributions on social sciences and
> humanities applications.
>
> In Gaffield's case, the CFI denied eligibility for the projected original
> costs of producing the historical enumerations that StatsCan is
> contributing to the project. But it was willing to accept an algorithm
> calculating the value of StatsCan's time and effort associated with
> transforming that data into a form that was usable by the CCRI.
>
> Similarly, Rockwell says TAPoR was able to calculate an algorithm
assigning
> value to the copyright of electronic texts donated by publishers on
> out-of-print Canadian novels. "I have no idea whether the people
> adjudicating us noticed it, but for us it was part of trying to establish
a
> precedent which can used by humanists in general. And this goes beyond
just
> text. I mean, people in the theatre who do performances, there's all sorts
> of value in the arts that is comparable to the value that pharmaceutical
> companies have in patents and equipment and samples that they're prepared
> to donate. If we can educate the arts community and educate ourselves, I
> think we can begin to express the way the arts industry is willing to
> support the arts and humanities, and express that to the government to
show
> that there is a feedback loop, which is what they seem to want in this
> co-investment business."
>
> Such developments are a hopeful sign of an evolutionary understanding of
> the unique infrastructure needs and conditions of the social sciences and
> humanities, Gaffield says. "I think there is an enormous amount of
learning
> going on, on both sides. In the end, you will get a kind of model of how
> the program should operate on both sides."
>
> Until then, Gaffield, Rockwell and Phillips are universally agreed on the
> singularly most important element of a social sciences and humanities
> infrastructure application: "persistence."
>
> OTHER TRENDS
> With CFI applications generally serving as an indicator of the future
> research directions, Strangway notes several national trends can be
> discerned from among the applications.
>
> A great deal of focus is being placed on research into improving water
> quality in the wake of events like the Walkerton water tragedy, while
> there's a significant amount of activity in such areas as proteomics,
> nanotechnology; biodiversity/bioinformatic; high-performance computing;
and
> treatment of the disabled.
>
> Canada is making major strides in improving its capacity for
> high-performance computing, Strangway says. "There's a list produced out
of
> Geneva that lists the top 500 computing facilities around the world. Three
> years ago, Canada had two on the list, at the bottom of the 500 and that's
> all. The last list has 11, some in the middle."
>
> That will only improve with the raft of new computing initiatives which
> were successful in the most recent CFI competition, including the
> $11.9-million award to the University of Alberta to develop Canada's first
> major move into grid computing (in which dozens of computers are linked
> together and computations at any point in time are undertaken by those
with
> unused capacity).
>
> "We're really back in the game again in a big way," Strangway says.
> "Furthermore, we require all of these high-performance computers to be
> linked to the broadband network and we require them all to make at least
> 20% of the time available to people of other institutions. So here we've
> got high performance computing, well established in the country and
> accessible to anyone who can get on the broadband system to make it use of
> it."
>
> Strangway also notes universities are increasingly becoming the hub of
> regional technology clusters unleashed in the service of local economic
> development.
>
> Various economic models posit that university or government labs were
> critical to the development of such well-known international technology
> clusters as Silicon Valley in California, Route 124 in Boston or Hsinchu
> park in Taiwan. Among clusters many believe are emerging in Canada are
ones
> around telecommunications/photonics in Ottawa; agricultural biotechnology
> in Saskatoon, nanotechnology and medical imaging in Edmonton; fuel cells
in
> British Columbia; and bio-pharmaceuticals in Quebec.
>
> But there are signs of other nascent clusters, like food safety at Guelph;
> diabetes at the University of Alberta; aluminum at Chicoutimi; and
> animation and digital imaging at the Concordia University, Strangway says.
> "And I don't think it's because there was some central design. I think it
> was because institutions looked at what they could build on and where
their
> expertise was. It's really an outcome of the fact that we're requiring
them
> to do their research planning and decide where it is they want to go and
> what it is they want to do."
>
>
> Editor:
> Wayne Kondro is a freelance writer based in Ottawa.  The former Editor of
> the "Science Bulletin", an independent newsletter on national S&T policy,
> he is currently a regular contributor to such publications as "Science"
and
> "The Lancet".
>
>
>