On 1 July, I took up office as Secretary-General of HFSPO and I thank the President, the Board of Trustees and the HFSP community for placing their trust in me for this position. I am honoured to succeed Professor Anderson after six years of his service and would like to express my thanks to him for his wise counsel in preparing me for the task of serving this unique Program and its community of scientists around the world.
The key to the Program’s success may lie in its beginnings. These are grounded in the vision and experience of the late Prime Minister of Japan, Mr Yasuhiro Nakasone, who was born in 1918 at the close of the First World War, served in the Second World War, and rose to political prominence in the post war years, notably as Prime Minister from 1982 to 1987, when the Cold War still cast its shadow over hopes of lasting peace. It was in this divided world, at the Venice G7 Summit in 1987, that he launched the idea of HFSP, convincing his fellow G7 leaders - President Regan of the United States of America, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney of Canada, President Mitterand of France, Chancellor Helmut Kohl of Germany, Prime Minister Amintore Fanfani of Italy, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of the United Kingdom and President of the European Commission Jacques Delors - of the need for a program in basic life science research that would ‘build up intellectual assets common to all humanity’, tackling the problems of the world holistically by pulling together the highest scientific resources of every nation. At the same time, the initiative would be a powerful tool to build bridges over national and disciplinary borders, bringing together the people of the world through scientific collaboration.
Today, the world still has its deep divisions, and the need to tackle common problems collectively is even more pressing and more relevant than ever before. My ambition, as we prepare for the 2022 Triennial Conference of HFSPO Members next June, is to lay out a long-term strategy for HFSP that will make it even more frontier and more relevant to the problems and opportunities of the 21st century. But also an HFSP which is more inclusive, and more reflective of the current global scientific and geopolitical landscape, and hence in a better position to serve its mission to science without borders globally, while providing clear benefits and added value to its current and future HFSPO Members and supporting parties.
While the 20st century is widely known as the century of physics and chemistry, with the combustion engine, electricity, nuclear power, and internet being the mainstay examples of scientific and human progress, the 21st century is often hailed as 'The Century of Biology', or 'The Age of Biology', making HFSP all the more essential to the scientific enterprise. Bringing together the best minds around the world to tackle the key question ‘What is life?’ through the exploration of the complex living systems and its inter-connected parts, HFSP may be better placed than others to stimulate scientific advances by its focus on high risk - high gain research based on ideas that are fresh, bold and innovative, grown from young creative minds with expertise in different fields, over different continents, and often without preliminary data.
HFSP projects draw on expertise from an ever-increasing range of disciplines beyond the life sciences to solve biological questions, and vice-versa. In order to respond to the transformational challenges of our time, such as climate change and food security, we need a new and deep engagement with the fundamental science of living biodata.
As a mathematician and earth system modeler, I am one of those looking to biology to unlock new depths of understanding and resolve the most persistent uncertainties and questions in my own field, the earth system sciences. Further advances in my specific area of land-atmosphere interactions will only be possible when earth system scientists, with their traditionally mechanistic approach, drawing on physics, (predominantly inorganic) chemistry, and the ‘number crunching’ potential of powerful supercomputers, engage with the study of living systems to provide insights into how life functions in the biosphere of land, ocean and the atmosphere. HFSP firmly believes that progress is made on the interface between disciplines and is fully committed to promoting such transdisciplinary approaches.
Frontier research is by nature 'edgy’ or unconventional. Yet the frontiers shift. Those areas, such as synthetic biology, that were truly frontier not so many years ago have now become mainstream. While it is our primary role to support and fund bottom-up ideas, it is also our task at HFSP to stimulate new directions and map possible new territory. At present, we are putting together a group of world leading experts to consider and outline the ‘Frontiers of Life Sciences Anno 2021’, in the hope that this may stimulate further discussion of emerging areas and interfaces. Among the frontier questions I personally would like to see addressed are, for example, how to harness artificial intelligence and big data in a productive partnership with fundamental process understanding in biology. Another is how cognitive science or psychology and fundamental (neuro)biology together can help us understand what is driving our behaviour, also in relation to behaviour economics, to support the already mentioned transformational changes of the 21st century. Another fundamental, unresolved question is why one of the most important biological processes on our planet –photosynthesis – is such an incredibly inefficient process, in being able to utilize only a small percent of otherwise abundant light energy to generate its chemical energy to produce the biomass. Try to imagine what a scientific discovery, resulting in the modest doubling of sunlight-to-biomass efficiency, would mean for food security and environmental sustainability in our 21st century world….
But frontier intellectual leadership is also required to maximize the benefit of science to society. One topic for discussion could be how to shorten the innovation cycle, bringing the outcomes of fundamental research more speedily into effect.
To date, HFSP has supported more than 3000 fellows and 1000 research grant collaborations involving some 4000 team members worldwide. Researchers from more than 70 countries have received HFSP support and funding so far. Many have gone on to become true frontier science leaders and to win prestigious international prizes, such as the Breakthrough Prize, the Brain Prize, the Leibniz Prize, the Kavli Prize, the NIH Director's New Innovator Award, the Canada Gairdner International Award or the Japan Prize. 28 of our grantees have gone on to win the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology, Chemistry or Physics. These breathtaking results and successes over just 32 years of HFSP’s existence are a true tribute to HFSP’s vision and mission, and proof that its implementation formula has worked exceedingly well, perhaps even beyond the boldest expectations of its founders. It is also a clear and, in my view, very convincing call for continued and increased commitment and support of the Program by its current and future Members, and by the international life science community at large.
I have no doubt that there are many more excellent innovative ideas to harvest around the world with the support of HFSP. For my part, as I begin my mandate as Secretary-General, I will keep the vision of our founders before me in the implementation of the Program - science for the advancement of knowledge and benefit for all humankind, science for peace.