Monday, September 10, 2012

10/9/2012: Ireland's flop in securing European Science Funding


Departing from the IMF, European Research Council has released the list of 2012 winning projects that obtained financial support from the Council under the ERC Starting Grant results, totaling €800 million. The link to the list is here.

Now, a quick run through the headline results:

  • Ireland scored 4 projects (2 each for TCD and UCD)
  • Portugal (not a country we in Ireland usually associate with being the Land of Scholars) scored same as Ireland
  • Israel scored 24 projects
  • Austria 9 projects
  • Belgium 19 projects
  • Switzerland 33 projects
  • Netherlands scored 51 project
  • Finland 8 projects
  • Denmark 13 projects
  • Sweden 22 projects
  • And to add insult to our injury: University of Bristol (UK) and University of Edinburgh scored 5 projects each (more than the entire country of Ireland), while University of Warwick 4 projects (same as Ireland as a whole)
  • University College London scored 16 projects
  • In some consolation, powerhouse of knowledge, Northern Ireland, scored none
Here's a handy chart from ERC:


But wait, it gets worse. When broken down by nationality of grantees, Ireland has 7 Irish nationals granted research proposals:


Which includes more Irish national academics working ABROAD than in Ireland:

And, among the researchers who got grants in Ireland, there are a number of non-nationals:

You can check the above in here.

So that strategy on funding and managing research in Ireland - it is clearly working marvels... oh, and do you now think Irish Universities poor rankings have nothing to do with real world outcomes?..

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