A Wellcome chance for introspection and innovation

Source: Wellcome Trust

Scanning the horizon: new science head will help trust find future opportunities

Impact has inevitably become the watchword for university research departments since its inclusion in the criteria for this year’s research excellence framework.

Now, the biggest non-governmental funder of university research in the UK, the Wellcome Trust, is focusing more on how it assesses impact by establishing a new department in the area and looking for someone to lead it.

The department of science strategy, performance and impact will look at how it predicts and measures results from its existing portfolio of grants and consider whether the organisation is missing opportunities in science.

Its new head will be expected to scrutinise the existing internal committees, systems and criteria that are used to make funding decisions to see if other methods could offer more potential.

“At the level of science we need to be introspective. Are we working in the right ways? Are we doing the right things? We have decided to do more of that,” said Kevin Moses, director of science funding at the trust.

Each year, the trust spends £600 million on research in the UK and overseas and the post holder will look at past assessments of impact to see if the systems in place to measure it are up to scratch.

New criteria and other factors that could help the trust to make “wise decisions” on funding will also be considered.

Wellcome currently has various methods of measuring impact. These include end-of-grant reports, annual visits to funded scientists and research meetings. “We have not been really systematic and we want to think harder about that,” Dr Moses said.

“I can imagine all sorts of things,” he added, which he suggested could include a combination of “arithmetic metrics” and “common sense”.

Scanning the horizon to find future opportunities that the trust could plug “productively” with new funding is also part of the remit. This will involve holding discussions with people in other organisations in the UK and overseas as well as those in the different science departments of the trust to spot potential new areas of science and new funding mechanisms for research.

One aspect of this will be making sure that the trust does not duplicate the efforts of others.

“We need to think about how we best apply our money to new large initiatives,” Dr Moses added.

The head of the new department will be able to recruit a further three team members to help with the tasks.

Dr Moses said that there are a number of backgrounds that could lead someone to be the right candidate for the job. This could include scientific or clinical researchers, people with administrative and funding experience, economists or journal editors.

holly.else@tsleducation.com