Piece of Mind

Innovate

Is it the Canadian Foundation for Innovation or really the Canadian Foundation for Infrastructure? The modus operandi of the CFI has skewed university priorities and strained their finances, diverted provincial resources, put pressure on the NSERC and CIHR budgets to secure operating funds, while discriminating against entire disciplines and burdening researchers with red-tape. But it surely shines compared to the Knowledge Infrastructure Program (KIP) and things may be starting to change…
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Your era at the helm of Canada’s national strategy for research and development, has been one of action, proactive leadership in research policy, tight management of federally funded programs, as well as increased and sustained support for certain research areas.

Indeed, we have been hearing a great deal lately about the targeting of Canada’s research effort towards government priorities, such as the Automobile of the 21^st century, Bombardier, Pratt & Whitney and others.
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NSERC has recently adopted a new evaluation system for its Discovery Grants. It relies on a “binning system”, that is based on a fragmented decision-making process. It has been widely criticized for its volatility, its lack of uniformity, and for its negative impact on early-career scientists, as well as on  universities with no or minimal graduate programs. Just in case the binning system is here to stay, we give a few easily implementable suggestions to improve the process.   The use of a slightly more involved non-linear formula may be necessary to help mitigate some of the described flaws.
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A Government R&D review expert panel is working on figuring out why Canada lags behind many of its peers in capitalizing on research advances despite Ottawa’s $7-billion innovation budget. They are asking for input. Front line researchers are urged to come forward and not allow the shopkeepers and their privileged customers to monopolize the consultation process.
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Would-be mathematicians learn about David Hilbert’s 23 problems way before they even learn how to ask someone for a first date. Presented by Hilbert at the International Congress of Mathematicians held in Paris in 1900, these problems stimulated mathematical research in the 20th century, and all but two have now been resolved in one way or another.
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