Research leaders outline how science can win through during a crisis
Research funders must make the deployment of cash to scientists faster and more flexible when crises such as pandemics strike, an event on lessons learned from the Covid-19 pandemic has heard.
While the pandemic has taken a huge toll on the world, with more than two million people dead, the research sector has shown its strength in fighting the Covid-19 virus, the 8 March online event organised by the British Irish Chamber of Commerce was told.
“It’s been a really clear period of triumph for science, universities and industry,” said Jonathan Seckl, senior vice-principal at the University of Edinburgh.
He listed achievements such as sequencing and modelling of Covid-19 in days, developing tests and diagnostics within weeks, and making vaccines in mere months.
“Some of it was just luck,” he admitted, but a lot of it was down to advances in science, as well as in quick industry scale-up. “The science has been remarkable.”
Early investment
At the University of Oxford, risky early investment by the university was key to getting the ball rolling on Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine production, said Patrick Grant.
The pro-vice-chancellor for research said the university’s ability to invest quickly, without lengthy grant approvals, helped get the project off the ground quickly, as did the vaccine team’s ability to quickly leverage its expertise with international partners in the US and in Italy.
The vaccine effort was also helped by 20 years of R&D investment, which provided an expert base that could be tapped.
Grant hopes the university can keep “agility in decision-making” going forward.
Others at the meeting also stressed the need to quickly get money to researchers working on crisis topics.
A “rapid” response from university and government sectors is “essential” to research, noted Alan Parker, a virus researcher at Cardiff University.
Ciarán Seoighe, deputy director general of Science Foundation Ireland, said her organisation “tried to use the pandemic as a catalyst to increase collaboration between funders”.
One “silver lining” of the pandemic is that funders managed to work together faster, setting up and issuing new joint calls through a simpler process—with no complex application forms—in a matter of weeks, he said.
Setbacks
But Covid-19 has also caused major setbacks for research, via reduced mobility, paused field experiments and other impacts.
Jean Kennedy, director of Devenish’s Global Innovation Centre, said research mobility has plummeted. As well as travel restrictions, she noted that visa processes have also “severely slowed down”.
Her centre experienced interruptions to students coming on placements too, with some projects slowing down to a “snail’s pace” as a result.
Scientists on fixed-term contracts and early career researchers are facing an especially precarious situation given delays in their projects.
Grant warned that while for a minority of researchers there has never been this much funding and work, for those such as field researchers, there are now practically “zero” opportunities.