An Interview with John Womersley Chief Executive Officer of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
9 December 2014
John Womersley, STFC
CoPoRI1 in close cooperation with ESFRI2 and the European Commission organized on 25th September 2014 in Trieste, Italy a remarkable workshop, in an attempt to raise awareness among the scientific community about the next Roadmap update in 2015-2016. A detailed analysis of the Research Infrastructures landscape within specific scientific fields was presented, highlighting the role of ESFRI. The next Roadmap update was outlined, as well as its interfaces with Horizon 2020 and other relevant national and European interfaces. “The launch workshop was held to raise awareness of ESFRI’s roadmap update which is now starting, with a deadline of March 31, 2015 for new projects to be proposed. The workshop aimed to explain the process of submission and evaluation and provide an opportunity for funders and project proponents to ask questions,” says John Womersley, Chief Executive Officer of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).
The term ‘research infrastructures’ (RIs) refers to facilities, resources and related services used by the scientific community to conduct top-level research in their respective fields. They range from local/national to European/international scales, they may be single-sited, distributed, or virtual. RIs are at the center of the knowledge triangle of research, education and innovation: they attract young people to science, bridge scientific communities across countries, attract the best researchers from around the world providing shared access to unique or distributed scientific facilities, drive scientific discoveries and technological developments and thus bring together a wide diversity of stakeholders looking for solutions to current problems that society is facing. Since its inception in 2002 “ESFRI has delivered a coordinated, strategy-led approach to planning for big research facilities across Europe. It has avoided duplication and has raised the profile of these projects, highlighting the need for investment”.
Building on Success
The ESFRI Roadmap identifies new pan-European Research Infrastructures or major upgrades to existing ones, to meet the needs of European research communities in the next 10 to 20 years, in all fields of research. The first roadmap was released in 2006 and included 35 new RIs (or major upgrades of existing ones). It was followed by an update in 2008 and a further update focusing on Energy, Food and Biology, published in 2010. “ESFRI has helped to explain the socio-economic impacts of large research infrastructures but I think there is still more work to be done in this area”.
ESFRI’s mandate has been expanded by the Council in December 2012 to ensure the follow-up of implementation of already on-going ESFRI projects, as well as the prioritization of the infrastructure projects listed in the ESFRI roadmap. A further update came at the Informal Competitiveness Council in Milano (July 2014) to complete a new Roadmap for 2016 with new criteria of selection and format. “The new roadmap will contain a much shorter and more focused list of projects – around 25 compared with 48 in the present roadmap. It will also contain much more discussion of the overall research landscape and the interaction with existing projects and will also describe the ‘success stories’ in terms of projects from the earlier roadmaps that are now under construction or delivering science”. It will be more of a strategy document to achieve optimal use, continuous upgrade sustainability and end of life perspectives.
European astronomy and astroparticle physics remains very competitive on an international scale, the research areas in the two communities merging together, from solar research to gravity waves and CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background). “In contrast to some other more mature areas, the astroparticle community is proposing a substantial number of new large projects, driven by the need to address fundamental physics questions in an incisive way. This is both a challenge and an opportunity – clearly the scale of investment needed presents a challenge, but by working in a more coordinated way across Europe was have the chance to make substantial progress on major questions about our understanding of the universe. In the existing roadmap, CTA is making good progress, and I hope that KM3NET will be able to move forward on a staged implementation plan in the next couple of years,” says Womersley.
Global Coordination
The ESFRI roadmap was a direct incentive to the development of national roadmaps for RIs in the Member States and Associated Countries. “The vast majority of European countries now have national research infrastructure roadmaps following the ESFRI example and explaining which international projects they plan to participate in”. The ESFRI action will facilitate the cooperation of European and non-European infrastructures and the development of global research infrastructures: “Coordination at a European – and increasingly a global – level is essential for these very large scale projects. We need to pool resources if we are to make the scale of investment needed to address today’s pressing science questions”. Today’s science issues require broad data sharing and networking between national nodes – distributed RIs. “In many cases the scientific communities already operate internationally and the funding agencies need to do the same.”
As a forum, ESFRI is an informal structure: “We are not a funding body (we have not even a budget for our own meetings and travel). The vast bulk of investment in the ESFRI projects must come from national sources. The European Commission, through framework programmes and now Horizon 2020, has provided some support for preparatory phase activities. Last year the commission asked ESFRI for its advice on which projects would benefit from additional support to help implementation, and some modest funding from Horizon 2020 has been reserved for the 12 projects we identified. In some cases it may also be possible for projects to access European regional development (Structural) funds, as long as the host country/ies have included research infrastructures as a priority in their regional development “Smart Specialisation Strategy,” says Womersley.
The first support action will be implemented under the call INFRADEV-3-2015: Individual implementation and operation of ESFRI projects. A total budget of about 90 million € will be allocated to this action. Proposals can only be submitted through ESFRI Delegations and/or by a Council of an EIROforum, the deadline for proposal submission is Tuesday 31 March 2015 17.00 CET. Projects selected for the roadmap will be expected to move to implementation in less than 10 years from their first inclusion on the roadmap.
1European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures
2CoPoRI: Communication and Policy development for pan-European Research Infrastructures.
CoPoRI is a project funded under FP7 to support ESFRI activities
Further reading:
All material from the workshop is available online
Research Infrastructures and ESFRI