Cash awards have persuaded 25 promising scientists to settle in Europe, but there still remain other barriers to fostering bioentrepreneurs on the continent.
On 26 August in Stockholm, two alliances of national European research councils for the first time handed out €27 ($33) million in five-year grants to 25 postdoctoral scientists from all over the world. It was an attempt, organizers said when they announced the winners, to ‘turn brain drain into brain gain’ for the European Union. But industry representatives say such attempts will prove futile without efforts to enhance Europe’s environment for innovative startups.
The flow of young European scientists to the United States, pursuing either academic or business careers, is drawing increasing attention. In November 2003, for example, outgoing EU Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin presented a study that shows the growing pace with which brains are leaving the European Union. According to that study, close to 1,500 young European scientists earned a PhD in the United States in 2000. More importantly, in a sample of Europeans gaining a US doctorate in the past decade [OR: between 1991 and 2000 , 70% told investigators they’d prefer to stay in that country. Better career prospects and access to leading technologies were the main reasons they cited for not wanting to head back any time soon.
The problem is all the more pressing because EU government officials have repeatedly said they want to firmly boost European innovative strength in the coming years. Countries have promised to increase their public and private spending on research and development by 50% between now and 2010, both nationally and through expanded EU funding programs like the upcoming 7th Framework Programme. To carry out this extra research, 700,000 additional scientists will be needed on top of expected replacements for retiring researchers, according to European Commission (EC) projections. But in actual fact, the number of home-bred European researchers is stagnant. The EC called the lack of qualified scientists one of the biggest obstacles for its ambition of becoming the world’s most competitive knowledge-based economy.
Last year, in order to attract more and better researchers to the continent, national research organizations from 15 European countries bundled parts of their national budgets to create the European Young Investigator awards (EURYI), which enable young and promising scientists anywhere in the world to set up their own research group in Europe. Last month in Stockholm, the first group of 25 scientists, who received their PhDs between 2 and 10 years ago, were awarded five-year grants, worth up to €1.25 ($1.5) million each.
Whether the grants will really lure researchers to Europe is still unclear. Of the first awardees, only two have non-EU nationalities and only four were working in the United States. Moreover, attracting 25 people a year would seem like a drop in the ocean when 1,500 are leaving. When contacted by Bioentrepreneur, some recipients said the grants helped in binding them to Europe, but others said they would have stayed there or headed back even without the money.
Because the award program targets excellent individuals rather then specific research areas, innovation oriented fields such as biotech will not be boosted directly. But according to the organizers, even enticing a small number of excellent scientists to stay can in the end make a big difference. ‘To fight brain drain, we need people who will be lighthouses in their field,’ says Beate Scholz, program director at the German funding agency Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), which was the main instigator and contributor of the European awards. ‘They will start new centers, which in turn will start attracting more scientists,’ Scholz adds.
The 25 EURYI awards don’t constitute the only effort to fight the European brain drain. Since 2003, the European Commission is setting aside €10 ($12) million per year for about 125 Marie Curie International Reintegration Grants, offering returning scientists and their new employers about €80,000 ($98,000) each. In another attempt, the EC set up a website that promotes European career opportunities. Furthermore the Commission has promised to work on alleviating harsh national visa-requirements for non-Europeans, because some countries currently don’t give out work-visas to non-EU scientists. And on 1 September, the European Heads of Research Councils (EUROHORCs) and the European Science Foundation (ESF) formally opened the competition for a second round of 25 EURYI awards, with two more countries participating.
But Johan Vanhemelrijck, secretary general of the European biotech industry organization EuropaBio in Brussels, is skeptical about the ultimate impact of programs targeting academics. ‘Of course we applaud anything that stimulates research,’ he says. ‘Yet we are focusing more on what happens when those bright scientists have made great discoveries and try to set up new companies.’ Vanhemelrijck worries that Europe has too little available seed capital and venture capitalists, that it lacks a suitable stock market, and that EU government regulations are too stifling for the commercialization of innovative products. ‘That’s when Europe is loosing another set of its brains: young entrepreneurs.’