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Professor Marja Makarow discusses some of the main initiatives in which she was involved at the Academy of Finland before her move to Biocenter Finland, and the challenges these contained

As vice-president for research at the Academy of Finland since 2012, Professor Marja Makarow has been involved in many of the most significant developments to emerge from this Finnish Research Council in recent years, including a new initiative to profile the research activities and interests of Finnish universities and a new focus on ensuring research results are translated into societal benefits.

In July, Makarow moved from this position to become the new director of Biocenter Finland, a distributed nationwide infrastructure network of five biocentres in six Finnish universities that provides research services to the entire Finnish research community, in academia and industry, and, to a limited extent, also to users abroad.

Speaking again to Pan European Networks as she prepared to take up her new post, Makarow outlined her involvement in these activities, explaining how they have played a fundamental role in redefining the Finnish research and development landscape, and also discussed the role the social sciences and humanities (SSH) have to play.

Congratulations on your new post at Biocenter Finland. How will the way you approach this differ from your work at the Academy of Finland?

Thank you. There will indeed be differences, and these will stem primarily from the way in which the two institutions work. In the Academy of Finland, there is a president and then two vice-presidents. As one of these, I was responsible for what might be termed the research issues, while the other, who is at the same level, is responsible for administrative and legal issues, regulations and good practice, and this person must always be a lawyer.

The two vice-presidents work hand in hand with whatever ideas are put forward and any challenges, questions, or problems which may arise. My co-vice-president would ensure that anything we do is legally sound and does not contravene any regulations. While this is an important and, moreover, a very effective way of working, it does also go some way to stifling creativity, while my position at Biocenter Finland will not have the same constraints.

Nevertheless, I have thoroughly enjoyed my time at the Academy of Finland. While perhaps this has been a tumultuous time for the Academy, we have created a lot of new things, and I am very thankful for everything I have learnt there.

At Biocenter Finland I will once more be immersed in the university context, which is much more open and flexible when it comes to new ideas.

The Academy of Finland is allocating €50m annually to support Finnish universities in profiling themselves into distinct areas of strength. Can you tell me more about how the academy is providing funding for research institutions?

In the past, the recipients of funding from the Academy of Finland were principal investigators and research teams. But now, in addition to this, we are also allocating funding to research institutions (primarily universities) via two new funding instruments.

One of these is designed to aid universities to profile their research activities. This stems from the Finnish University Act, which came into force in 2010 and which gave almost full autonomy to the universities in the hope that they would avoid focusing on the same areas and instead make selections according to their strengths, their potential strengths, and where they see potential openings in the R&D landscape.

Unfortunately, the Finnish universities did not do that voluntarily, and so the ministry took €50m from their aggregated block fund and gave it to the Academy of Finland with the request that we develop a competitive instrument through which the universities were able to get this money back by competing with clever research strategies and very concrete implementation plans. Within these applications, they must articulate where their strongest research areas are and what they want to develop in the long term.

Additionally, in the area of research infrastructure, the Academy of Finland is mandated to govern research infrastructure funds and to formulate the strategy and roadmap for it, and this is achieved with a relatively new committee. This funding is also made available to research institutions.

Finally, our political decision makers have realised that they need to make evidence-informed decisions concerning the development of Finnish society in the long term in order to tackle grand challenges. As such, they asked the Academy of Finland to formulate a new research council, which we have now done: the Research Council for Strategic Research. In this sense, the term ‘strategic’ refers to thematic research and the end users of the research findings are in constant dialogue with the researchers so as to ensure they are furnished with the results as soon as possible.

A new and very interesting element of this funding instrument is that the themes are not decided on by the Academy of Finland and its research councils, but by the Finnish government, and while this may be seen as a somewhat contentious issue, with some parties concerned about politicians becoming involved in what research should and should not receive funding, the initiative is continuing to evolve, with the second call now closed.

You mentioned the importance of infrastructure and the importance of strategic research. Did you look at European initiatives – ESFRI for infrastructure and Horizon 2020 for grand/societal challenges – for areas of best practice when developing these?

This is an excellent question. Regarding infrastructure the ESFRI effort has really been a guiding example, and at the national level we have certainly benefitted from the ESFRI roadmaps. We use the same nomenclature for research domains as ESFRI, which is very helpful, and our roadmap uses the same concept as the European one. We have annual calls for funding for research infrastructure investment, and within this we have an international panel for the evaluation of applications. Here, we have taken advantage of ESFRI delegates. As can be seen, we are fully utilising the ESFRI experience, and this has been extremely beneficial.

Regarding strategic research, the grand challenges concept of H2020 was not the foundation for our initiative (although it was an inspiration that the grand, global challenges are being addressed in such a direct manner), as this is more of a Finnish invention for Finland, with the aims focusing on Finnish society.

One important difference between Horizon 2020 and the Finnish efforts to boost strategic research is that we have an overarching emphasis on translating scientific research results for the benefit of society. This is reflected in the members of the Strategic Research Council, many of whom are experts with high prestige who are generalists and who have a broad understanding of the different sectors of society. A further distinctive feature of the Finnish programme is the idea of ‘relevance’, and this is the first programme in which relevance is together with excellence as a criterion.

Was the assessment of relevance difficult to achieve?

Yes, it was. While we use an international team of panellists to assess scientific excellence, for the relevance panel we also need Finnish expertise due to its focus on Finnish society. Furthermore, the teams must also be multidisciplinary and be in constant contact with the end users of the research findings. In this sense, the Finnish model perhaps more strictly adheres to the concept of translational and relevant research than H2020, but the aim is exactly the same: to use research to help mitigate societal challenges.

Is industry involved here as well?

It is possible that industry partners will become involved in the consortia, yes. However, within the themes launched so far, with three in 2015 and four in 2016, one has been on disruptive technologies and changing institutions, and while at first glance this could be interpreted as a focus on the development of disruptive technologies, that is not really the case. Rather, the emphasis is being placed on the final words: ‘changing institutions’. That is, how are technological developments affecting societal changes (an example of this would be the way in which mobile technologies have resulted in numerous changes throughout society in recent years)? Within this, the social sciences and humanities are increasingly playing a role.

The involvement of SSH is becoming increasingly important within scientific research and development across the board, and rightly so. Do you feel that it has been particularly challenging to foster this in Finland?

Indeed there have been challenges, and while there is now a focus on boosting the involvement of SSH scholars in consortia in both Finland and Europe, I certainly feel that this needs to be done from the very outset of any given project and, moreover, that SSH team members need to be involved as equal peers. However, in some areas there appears to be an element of reluctance to become involved, perhaps because these scholars and experts feel as though they are being almost forced into working in areas that are not of their own choosing and may only be being included to satisfy the multidisciplinary criteria of a proposal.

It is clear that those working in SSH fields must also receive the respect that they deserve from the wider community. This is something that I learned early in my career when, as a principal investigator, I had no real overarching knowledge of the entire community; I knew nothing about how scholarly research was carried out, or how their research environment differs from that of more ‘hard sciences’, which tend to make use of advanced technologies, extensive infrastructure, and graduate schools and so on. In contrast, many SSH researchers worked as individuals rather than in teams, and they pursued a research topic for a number of years, becoming a lone expert in a field or area with only a few peers in a small country.

When I took up the position of vice-rector of the University of Helsinki and was given a very broad remit, I then began to enhance my understanding, and it was here that I learned to respect the other research areas by developing an understanding of their culture and how they carry out their research. This understanding changed my perceptions, and from that I have worked to help foster a greater degree of collaboration.

There is a sense that this is happening; certainly the SSH are becoming more involved, and the signs are positive.

Yes, I certainly agree that the trend is to the better, and there are perhaps two issues worthy of mention here – again, the research infrastructure focus of the Academy of Finland (and, of course, ESFRI) has been very beneficial here, with many of the ESFRI initiatives that Finland is or will be a member of in the SSH area. This is a real plus and is driving this positive atmosphere.

Second is the idea of the visibility of humanities research. When something is not very well-known, then it may arouse suspicions, and so an enhanced visibility of SSH researchers – particularly when it comes to other scientific areas – would help to cement its status and relevance, and this could be achieved by publishing more in peer reviewed journals.

Professor Marja Makarow

Director

Biocenter Finland

http://www.biocenter.fi/

This article first appeared in issue 20 of Pan European Networks: Science and Technology, available here.