The head of Science Foundation Ireland, Dr William Harris, leaves office to take up a new position in the US. He talks to Dick Ahlstrom
The inaugural and highly successful director general of Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) departs for the US at the end of this month after five years in office. Dr William Harris has been a powerful force for good in the development of Ireland's research infrastructure and will be missed.
He describes how his arrival was met with much suspicion as scientists attempted to understand what he, and the creation of SFI, would mean to the future of Irish research.
Harris admits to being surprised at the level of mistrust, particularly as the decision to create SFI had been grounded in a comprehensive Technology Foresight Exercise. There was "a lot of suspicion, anxiety and lack of trust", he says. "I think all of that has gone away now."
He met the academics and explained what he hoped SFI would become and how their involvement was central to his plans. "I had to go out and make the intellectual case for SFI," Harris says. He initially thought it would be relatively easy to create SFI as a "mini-National Science Foundation" tailored on the US institution, but it was much more of a challenge than he realised.
Things are different now however and in the main researchers working in the new environment with significant State funding are happy and the mistrust is gone, says Harris. "I think that it has been well received."
Harris, who came to us in 2001 from the University of South Carolina as a former professor of chemistry and vice-president for research, has no difficulty remembering his first day in office. Even as he was unpacking boxes and moving into his new office in Wilton Park House in Dublin overlooking the Grand Canal, two airliners flew into the twin World Trade Centre towers.
"I will never forget that. I was on my first day and Ed Walsh [ former University of Limerick president and chair of the Irish Council for Science, Technology and Innovation] came into my office to bring me to meet an ICSTI group."
His closing year at the helm of SFI had a disturbingly similar "book-end", he added. He was on a business trip to London last July 7th and was heading into the city as the bombs went off in the underground and on a bus.
WHEN IT CAME to devising a shape for the nascent SFI, Harris turned to his 20 years' experience at the US National Science Foundation (NSF). "The fact that this kind of institution didn't exist here before, enabled it to succeed," he believes. "We wanted SFI to be science friendly and friendly to scientists."
One thing that the NSF had that he wanted to see in SFI was the targeting of excellence, with only the best researchers and projects received funding, but also the "checks and balances" that ensured the money was being well spent and high standards maintained.
He put early successes down to hard work and the people he had working with him including Alisdar Glass who managed the SFI's information and communications technology area and John Atkins who looked after biotechnology in the early days.
SFI was originally encouraged to be a large organisation but Harris decided to grow it slowly. "I have to give enormous credit to the staff here," he says.
He also moved very cautiously in the disbursement of funding. He realised that the young SFI was under considerable scrutiny and he wanted any group funded early on to perform well.
"We started off very slowly," he says. The team didn't rush to get the cash into the hands of researchers, SFI wanted to have the systems in place to monitor what was happening. Confidence began to deepen however when SFI landed a "big fish", actually a team of fish associated with leading photonics researcher David Cotter.
He left the UK with his entire research group to take up an SFI grant at University College Cork. Cotter's departure prompted a parliamentary hearing in London on how the UK had lost this important research group.
Next came the news that Bell Labs was coming to Ireland, says Harris. "That startled people when Bell Labs came over here."
SFI funded high calibre researchers no matter where they were from so long as they pursued their research activity here in Ireland. This policy, allied to making very significant awards in keeping with international norms - up to €5 million per individual recipient for a five-year programme - helped to bring quality scientists from abroad. Notably many of them were expatriate Irish scientists who left during the bleak science Diaspora of the 1980s.
This influx prompted Time magazine to highlight Ireland's success in a feature looking at the brain drain from many western countries. Harris was delighted with the positive image this created for Ireland's researchers. "Ireland has had a brain gain. It is small numbers because we are a small country, but it is significant."
Harris believes that the NSF model, rather than the research council approach, was the correct one for Ireland. It is clear how decisions are made, there is good accountability and there is also better accessibility to the top. "The NSF model keeps people hungry because it is always competitive," he says.
This has helped SFI as it continues to develop. "We are trying to be fast, fluid and focused," he says. The associated bureaucracy has been kept as small as possible to maximise the availability of funds for research. "We put about 95 per cent of the money the Government gave us into grants. We work hard on our operational costs to keep them low."
To date SFI has made financial commitments to researchers worth €555 million, with 830 awards across all SFI programmes. This has involved the work of more than 2,250 scientists including 1,440 post-docs and post-grads.
"We have made a very good start but I believe it will take another five years to bed this down," Harris believes. "I think we have made a good start but we are only at the start. It has to be managed carefully, it has to be nurtured. We have to manage this changed culture carefully."
He strongly believes that SFI has helped to bring about a refinement in the way scientists view their research. "You have to go through a culture change," he says. Academic researchers have to act like small business men controlling their projects like a commercial operation.
There has also been a change for Ireland's reputation abroad. "The fact that it has become an internationally recognised brand is hugely significant," he states. "The challenge will be, as you become a more mature organisation, the danger will be SFI will suffer the same problems as the NSF, bureaucracy."
ONE MEASURE OF success has been the influx of researchers from abroad, he says. But therein lies an associated danger. Ireland had a limited reputation for research and too short a history of investment in science. Things are much better now and people are willing to come here. The challenge will be to keep them here.
"That is the hard part, it is too easy to get complacent," Harris declares. The world is always short of good scientists. "The main thing you are doing is investing in human capital. All of the countries go after these people and it is hard to get them."
That is why Ireland's success in attracting world class researchers from abroad was so significant. Watching what these scientists do as the Government's research policy progresses will say much about our performance, he believes.
"Again, it is going to be about human talent. The system is still very small. It would be easy to forget while you can get people to come here they could decide to leave. The scientists by their actions will tell you how Ireland is doing. Just watch the human capital flow."
He expresses some disquiet about the failure to agree and appoint a successor as director general before his own departure. "When you have a young institution the succession thing is very important," he says. A candidate has been identified and negotiations continue, according to the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment.
Early inJuly Harris will find himself in Arizona where he is to head Science Foundation Arizona, built using a combination of state and private finance. "It is supposed to be a public private partnership if it comes off," he says. "It intends to help create a more vibrant economy. The government is ambitious, the private sector is ambitious to build a high-tech economy."
For his part, Harris will be sad to leave Ireland after five busy years. "I found it very challenging, very interesting. In some ways it seemed longer than five years because of the long days, but it also feels like yesterday."
He was happy while here to have tracked down some Irish ancestors in Galway, the Colemans, who he says "have been a wonderful source of friends".
He didn't particularly like the Irish weather, especially the wind, but he did learn to play golf "badly".
While he was initially slow to leave South Carolina in 2001, he was glad he did so. "Rarely do you get an opportunity to build a science foundation. This was like a Field of Dreams for a scientist."