Category Archives: Op-eds

No wonder Indira Samarasekera had stressed in her submission to the R&D panel, that NSERC should “distinguish its funding of solution-driven research from basic discovery research.”  The President of the University of Alberta must know a thing or two about the fate … Continue reading →

“… the attitude that professional administrators with little scientific knowledge can arbitrarily decide the fate of UK science is arrogant, contemptuous of the scientific community and just wrong.”  A storm is indeed brewing in the scientific circles of the UK against … Continue reading →

NSERC Communications replied to our guest blogger Karel Casteels, about his post regarding the dwindling numbers of  graduate and postgraduate fellowships (CGS and PGS and PDFs). Cutting through the maze of budgetary reporting, the key to the story lies in the following NSERC statement: … Continue reading →

“Apres moi le deluge?”. Not so for Governor General’s Gold Medalist Scholar, Karel Casteels, who was the one who alerted us to the dramatic drop in NSERC’s graduate and postgraduate fellowships. He wrote then:  “I recently finished my own PhD. I … Continue reading →

Last December, during a lively public debate with Isabelle Blain, NSERC’s Vice-President for Research Grants & Scholarships, my colleague Martin tried to bring a positive note to the conversation by stating that at least NSERC’s new ways are not as bad … Continue reading →

Encouraged by NSERC’s response to explain the reasons behind the drop in the numbers of their graduate scholarships and postdoctoral fellowships, we decided to push our luck and inquire for the reasons behind the substantial decline  in the budgets of almost … Continue reading →

That was Michael Hartmer, director of the German Association of University Professors, commenting to Der Spiegel on the latest “textbook example of how not to manage the relationship between private industry and the academy”. A far cry from what was … Continue reading →

First there was the open letter to the industry minister by 327 mathematical scientists, including 27 Canada Research Chairs and 35 fellows of the Royal Society of Canada. Then came the public letter by 16 members of the Evaluation Group … Continue reading →

NSERC’s President Suzanne Fortier will be making a presentation on June 03 at the Edmonton meeting of the Canadian Mathematical Society. The unexpected visit is undoubtedly related to the public letter by 16 members of the Evaluation Group 1508, which … Continue reading →

16 out of the 28 members of Evaluation Group 1508  (for Mathematics and Statistics) wrote the following letter to NSERC’s President Suzanne Fortier to “draw (her) attention to the distressing results of the 2011 Discovery Grants Program”.  It is a … Continue reading →

Two months after the end of the 2011 competition for Discovery Grants, NSERC is yet to release the full data on its outcome. The reason given is that there is a gov’t-wide hold on releasing data/making announcements. However, colleagues who … Continue reading →

Canada’s mathematical sciences community currently faces many challenges. One that stands out particularly is the imminent elapse of the federal funding (about $5.4-million per year) for the MITACS Network of Centres of Excellence. This NCE currently supports 377 Canadian academic … Continue reading →

We are not used to see the normally confident scientists at the University of Toronto so agitated and angry at NSERC. Some of their mathematicians are screaming from the rooftops that the “NSERC Peer Review System is Broken for Mathematics“. … Continue reading →

Unlike the other parties, the Conservatives have now a 5-year track record on research policy. Their proposed 2011 budget may also be considered as their platform, at least for the short term. Their research policies are de-facto more detailed, hence … Continue reading →