I have been working in Life Science Industry for past 18 years and have very often come across discussions with scientist from government and corporate where funding to research comes up as a challenge.
It is not only from the researchers, when we as sales and marketing professionals discuss across the table Funding for research pops us as a challenge when it comes to acquiring and retaining market.
Having said that we find that some labs are doing extremely well while others are struggling, same is the case with companies selling products in research. Some are still able to deliver their numbers while others are creeping with the issue.
I feel there is a great analogy among the two, and this is not be problem with Life Science Industry but for any industry or for that matter our personal life. So I am trying to bring in my prospective in a more generalized way so that it is not specific to an industry or research stream.
Most of the Researchers who are now Principal Investigators would agree with me that situation were not different when they were research fellows, in fact it would be even worse because the technology and automation was not that evolved and it was more labor intensive research than today. Secondly the fellowship was also miser. And I hear from many that they had so spend from their fellowship to complete their work. What drive them to research was only their passion.
This brings me to my first challenge “Challenge of Abundance”
It is said by wise men that “Necessity is the mother of inventions”. So is it that abundance killing our Passion to strive more?
Is abundance of new instrumentation technologies, ready to use kits and reagents, sophisticated software’s making the new generation of researchers dependent and evading their creativity in research?
Is it not the same we are facing at our home, with our kids in this technology driven society? It is important to keep up the pace with the world, but pace is required in producing results and not acquiring machines and technologies. This desire to acquire stuff brings in major funding challenges.
The second important aspect is the funding agencies whether it is Government or Corporate.
While I was comparing the funding for Biotech Research from the past three years is a very marginal increment in the budget. This increment is just enough to cope up with the inflation. If we look at it from holistic view considering the incubation funds for new scientific startups then we find there is an increment. Probably it is Government look out to create job providers rather than job seekers in order to reduce the unemployment which for them is current priority. Also in case of corporate’s if the research funding is less than 2-3% of the turnover. But how much control do we have on this external factors. The only way out is to accept the situation and find our move on.
Striking a balance is what is required, if I am an individual who finds only Sunday for exercise it is waste to space and fund investing in a multigym and thread mill at home, it is better off to join a gym. Because it is not only the capital investment; it comes along with maintenance as well. It is very important come out from a mindset of fund utilization to fund management. It is important to think wisely whether on professional or personal front whether today’s expenditure is going to become tomorrow’s liability or asset. I feel if we can rationalize our purchase based on 80-20 ratio as we do in sales. If something will be utilized for 80% of time then it is worth investing, rest all should be rented out or out resourced. In the current funding contest I would not like my lab to be a Central Instrumentation Facility, rather I would of focus on one or two technologies and make it a Center of Excellence, so that others collaborate with me for those two techniques.
This brings me to the third important aspect that is Multidisciplinary Collaboration
We have outstanding chemist, botanist, microbiologist, zoologist, Biotechnologist and clinicians as individual Investigators/Researchers. When we have a stable Government at center which is demanding, it is only the interdisciplinary collaborations that will help us to come up with some applied research area. Let us not move 100% into applied research but at least 30% of our research should focus on applied outcomes in light of the current funding scenario. This kind of associations can not only bring out some new technologies OR services that can be transferred to industry, but can be a revenue generation model for researcher. Also when some new technology and product comes to market we contribute to society by creating new opportunity for employment.
This kind of collaborations should be done at all level, project writing, experiment designing, executions patent filing / publishing paper. We cannot operate in isolation and just collaborate in sharing authorship because we have assisted some were in the project like a service provider.
Gone are those days when we would say mine is a novel work and cannot be shared, at a same time 1000 scientist across the globe are working on similar areas. Research is no more different that other industries where people have targets and deadline. New publications are pouring in every day, being second means we are nowhere.
Last I feel is poor Research Planning as one which leads to funds loss.
In Indian contest time is something which is most ignored thing in any area. From funding to execution of order and receipt of material the standard time may vary from 2 months to 6 months and for instruments it may be even a year or more. So planning is very important aspect of research, not just reviewing papers but at the same time reviewing the available infrastructure, experimental protocols and reagents. If not available then collaborate with other scientist to get going. Time lost is money / fund lost because it directly impacts the successive funding.
When it comes to time one remarkable observation I have that we as Indians are very lazy in documentation / writing. I meet so many research fellows who have loads of data at the end of 4 th of 5 th year of their PhD and they have not yet started writing papers. I have some practical examples of Research scholars who have all data ready but while they were procrastinating documentation, a paper get published and all the work has gone to drain. This is a serious issue because we do not know how many such papers and patents are lost and PhD delayed because of improper planning of research.
I would say the need of the hour is IF WE FAIL TO PLAN, THEN WE ARE PLANNING FOR A FAILURE. In some universities and institutes in Europe they have a position of a Research Manager who takes care of the planning part of research.
So to summarize it, Rationalizing the Purchase, Adapting to Funding situation, Interdisciplinary Collaboration and Meticulous planning could be the only way out to survive in any profession in prevailing funding situation.