Article - HFSP Future Perspectives
The Human Frontier Science Program – Future Perspectives
Torsten Wiesel
The Human Frontier Science Program, which recently celebrated the 10th anniversary of its founding, has proven to be a unique and extremely valuable program working to support international collaborations at the frontiers of molecular biology and neuroscience. As we look forward in the decade ahead to the enormous promise of these disciplines in furthering biological and biomedical understanding, and bettering the condition of humankind, it is very important that the program be sustained and further developed in order to take full advantage of the scientific opportunities now opening up all around us.
Molecular biology is in the midst of a fundamental transformation. The human genome project, and genome sequencing of an increasing number of model organisms, human pathogens and agriculturally valuable plants, combined with DNA microarray and high-throughput proteomics technologies and initiatives, are changing the way biologists look at the molecular components of the living world. Increasingly, molecular biologists will move from the study of one or a few molecules in isolation, to the exploration of complex molecular, cellular and organismic systems at many complementary levels of resolution. In neuroscience as well we can begin to envision a melding of approaches that unites the reductionist study of single molecules and neurons with global, system-wide approaches, such as fMRI, that look at whole-brain activity.
The pioneering molecular biologist Sydney Brenner once said that "in the next twenty-five years we are going to have to teach biologists another language still. I don't know what it's called yet; nobody knows. But what one is aiming at, I think, is the fundamental problem of the theory of elaborate systems...that arise under conditions of natural selection." The need to develop this language is now urgently upon us; without this language we will fail to make sense of the ocean of information now flowing out of the genome projects and other comprehensive studies of complex biological systems like the brain. It is clear that the dictionaries of this new language will draw from disciplines that run the entire gamut of the natural sciences, relying on new and sophisticated mathematical and computational techniques, and that a new generation of young scientific talent from across the world will be needed to become this language's first native speakers.
HFSP aims to be at the forefront of promoting the development of this new interdisciplinary language of living systems. With its unique international scope, HFSP will continue to play a leading role in promoting scientific networks and collaborations across international borders, in both developed and developing nations. The recent appointment of a new President and Secretary General has afforded the opportunity to evaluate the progress we have made over the past decade, and, based both on this past experience and on the challenges that lie ahead, to refine and expand our programs. The following is a summary of changes that were approved by the HFSP Board in March, 2000
Research Grants
We have launched a series of new and refined initiatives that attempt to enhance the current grant program. In all grants, there will be a strong emphasis on interdisciplinary projects involving participants from clearly different fields, e.g., biophysics, biochemistry, bioinformatics, structural biology, genetics, chemistry and physics. Despite the need for a common language, the natural sciences still tend to be divided into different scientific cultures, and a fundamental goal of HFSP is to promote productive cross-cultural collaborations, bringing together groups with distinct but complementary skills and perspectives to approach problems of common interest.
1. Program for Young Investigators
HFSP is inaugurating a program that will support teams of talented young investigators - scientists who are within the first five years of establishing their own independent laboratories. It is to be expected that outstanding young scientists, in the initial period of their independent careers, are in a particularly good position to formulate innovative and fertile research projects. At the same time, in many countries, such young scientists find it difficult to gain support without a long track record of independent achievement. HFSP's interdisciplinary grants to young investigators will be targeted at truly novel collaborations, involving 2, 3 or 4 young investigators, each of whom would be based in a different country. Successful applicants would receive a standard sum of $250,000 per team per year. There will be a two-tiered application process that parallels that of the main research grant program, which is described below. This new program for young investigators will serve as a new bridge between our existing Fellowship and Grant programs.
2. Modification of the Main Research Grant Program
The current grant program is well appreciated by members of the scientific community, who have performed excellent research with the support of HFSP. However, we have the impression that many excellent scientists may not be applying to the program because of the low success rate (about 13%), and because the relatively modest amount of the grant (on average around $230,000 annually per team of 4) makes it difficult to commence a truly new research project, rather than just continuing or expanding an existing project
These considerations have led HFSP to change its main research grant program by increasing the size of the awards and introducing a two-tiered application process. The average amount of the grant will be increased to a maximum of $500,000 per year per team; the preferred number of teams will be 2-4. More emphasis will be given to supporting interdisciplinary, cutting edge collaborations that represent new departures for the teams involved.
Increasing the average award will lower the overall number of grants. However, we plan to offset this reduction in the total number of awards, and at the same time to increase the success rate of full applications, by introducing a two-step procedure involving a letter of intent to apply to the HFSP program, followed by a limited number of invited full applications. The letter of intent would describe the nature and goals of the scientific project, the mode of interaction between team members, the track records of the team members and the synergism to be expected from their collaboration. Applicants will be required to answer specific questions to ensure that the Review Committee obtain the information necessary to judge the merit of the applications and their suitability for the HFSP. Only those ranked highest by the review committee members will be invited to submit a full application, corresponding to 2-3 times the number of awards to be funded. The chance of success for those invited to submit full applications will be set at 30-50%, depending on the cut-off point for invitation.
In addition, the budgets proposals will be simplified to reduce the work of both applicants and reviewers.
Fellowship Programs and Career Development
The HFSP fellowship program has been highly successful in providing the most outstanding young scientists an opportunity for postdoctoral research training in a foreign laboratory. It is well-known that postdoctoral research projects very often serve as the direct foundation for the research program the fellow will pursue as an independent investigator. Through HFSP funds, highly-talented young fellows are able to choose both their project and the laboratory in which they will be trained. They are afforded the opportunity to establish new collaborations as individual researchers, as well as to serve as links, across national borders, between their home and host institutions. Thus the fellowship program is integral both to HFSP's goal of supporting the development of frontier, interdisciplinary research in molecular biology and neuroscience, and to promoting the building and maintenance of an international network of investigators with strong intercontinental ties.
In the future, HFSP will seek to develop strategies with home countries to foster global science, and to adapt its own training programs to encourage the seeding of scientific talent across the world. "Brain-drain" - the efflux of a nation's most talented young scientists and engineers to a few highly-developed countries, most particularly the United States - is an increasingly worrisome phenomenon. This year, 71% of the HFSP fellows plan to go to laboratories in the United States and our data indicate that only 47% of the fellows awarded between 1990-95 returned to their home country. Of course, HFSP has no wish to restrict the movement of individuals across borders to pursue career opportunities; indeed, this would be counter to HFSP's international philosophy. Nevertheless, our career development initiatives are being designed to maximize opportunities for nations to develop and retain their own young scientific talent, by providing new opportunities through which fellows returning to their home countries can begin careers as independent investigators, while maintaining scientific ties and collaborations developed abroad.
1. Third Year Fellowships
Over the past decade, the training period for postdoctoral fellows has increased because of the need for additional training in the increasingly sophisticated methods and approaches employed in modern biological research, and because of the increased time it takes to complete a given project. Our experience is that many fellows stay on in the host laboratory for varying periods of time beyond the two-year tenure of the HFSP Long-term Fellowship, before either repatriation or obtaining a permanent position in the host or another foreign country. Indeed, as noted above, our data indicate that fewer than half (47%) the fellows are repatriated even two years after the conclusion of the two years of their fellowship funding.
HFSP will thus provide a third year of funding for Long-term Fellows which will allow them: 1) to extend their stay in the host laboratory in order to maximize their training experience; or 2) to provide funds for a year of research support in their home country. This third year can be spent in the home country after the completion, in the host laboratory, of the first two years of the HFSP fellowship. While under the current budget, such a change in duration of the Long-term Fellowship program would reduce the number of awards from 160 to approximately 110 fellows, we feel this will make the program meet its goals more effectively.
Third year awards will provide fellows with an additional year of funding, which is often necessary given that HFSP fellows are encouraged to follow new research directions in their host labs. As a result, for many fellows the first year is spent learning not only new techniques, but also becoming acquainted with a new area of science; indeed, with the increasingly interdiscplinary nature of molecular biology and neuroscience, this rather extended initial learning period is to be expected. Thus many fellows begin their own research projects in earnest only in their second year. A third year of support will allow them to complete the experiments they have started and to finish the fellowship with a number of publications. In additions, research and travel allowances provided by the fellowship will be particularly valuable during this third year, as fellows prepare for their transition to their first independent position. Coupled with awardee meetings (see below), this will provide a major new opportunity and window of time for fellows to identify opportunities for further collaboration and funding, which will now include HFSP's new Career Development Awards and the Young Investigator grants program.
Short-Term Fellowships
Short-term Fellowships enable researchers at all stages of their career, though primarily focusing on younger investigators, to learn new techniques or establish new collaborations. Eligibility guidelines, however, have not previously enabled former Long-term fellows to utilize this program.
HFSP has broadened its Short-term Fellowship program to allow former Long-term Fellows who have returned to their home country to apply for short stays of 2 weeks to three months with their former mentors and collaborators. We believe this will strongly enhance our efforts to promote repatriation, by providing a bridge between newly-independent fellows and the host institutions where they received their training, as well as enhancing opportunities for continued international collaborations. In addition, the Short-term Fellowship program will continue to be open to other scientists who wish to form new research collaborations or learn new techniques.
Career Development Awards
HFSP alone cannot be responsible for encouraging investigators to return to their home countries and for providing support for repatriated, newly-independent investigators. However, former HFSP fellows will now be able to apply to the new HFSP Young Investigators grants program. In addition, the new Career Development Awards would link 2-3 year fellowship training with salary and research support for an additional 2 years on return to the home country. The young scientists who take the third fellowship year in the home country would be in a position to have established an independent research program and become competitive for a career development award. The award will provide annually $40,000 in salary support and $50,000 for research expenses. In the United States, this type of program has been shown to provide an effective mechanism for the development of independent young investigators and similar programs have also recently gained attention in several other countries. This mechanism will hopefully be explored with both member and non-members nations and private foundations as it would certainly serve the goals of HFSP well.
Workshops
The workshop program has brought together scientists working in different fields to explore new research frontiers. These workshops have resulted in a series of published monographs that have been well received by the scientific community. In order to increase the scope of these workshops and resulting publications, HFSP will appoint a standing committee of scientists to consider workshop applications and to actively seek new workshop topics, and will approach a publisher to produce and distribute workshop monographs.
Annual meetings of Awardees
Finally, HFSP plans to organize annual meetings of awardees, the first of which is planned to be held in Turin, Italy in the spring or fall of 2001. All grant awardees are expected to attend at least one meeting , preferably in the last year of the grant. Fellows from the region will also be invited to participate but fellows from other regions will not be excluded. These meetings will provide a forum for stimulating further collaboration; allow awardees to compare their experiences in setting up and conducting collaborations; allow HFSP and its scientific committees to evaluate the progress of the international research teams; and increase the sense of a global scientific community.
These meetings will be rotated between Japan and member countries in Europe and North America. And following our central goal of promoting interdisciplinary research across national boundaries, fellows and awardees from molecular biology and neuroscience will attend the same meeting, providing new opportunities to forge contacts and collaborations aimed at comprehending the amazing power and intricacy of complex biological systems.
Torsten Wiesel is President Emeritus of The Rockefeller University and Secretary General of the Human Frontier Science Program
This article was originally published in the Newsletter of the Japanese Neuroscience Society, Autumn 2000