research-policy

2011 Discovery Grants Competition Aftermath Anomalies in the results of the 2011 NSERC Discovery Grants competition provoked a flurry of activity nearly one year ago. My blog post from April last year reported on surprising results for several of my colleagues at Toronto.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science is gathering for their Annual Meeting for 2012. One way to measure academic trendiness is to look at search frequencies of keywords using the search tool for the AAAS conference.

Dear James, Thank you for this opportunity to respond to your recent blog posting on Perimeter Institute and offer some clarifications. First, the comparisons of support for different institutions and programs presented in this posting mix total funding over time (including endowment contributions) with annual budgets and ignore substantial differences between their operations.

Efforts to understand the foundational issues of theoretical physics have been made by scientists over millennia. Human beings are naturally curious: we want to deeply understand nature. With pioneering insights by Aristarchus and Archimedes, Copernicus and Kepler and, more recently, Dirac and Feynman, humans have made spectacular advances.

The Globe and Mail recently posted a story entitled “Building partnerships between businesses and universities” which highlights NSERC’s Engage Grants Program. Following the article, there appears an attribution I don’t usually see in The Globe:

The 2011 Winter CMS Meeting took place this past weekend. On Sunday (2011-12-11), there was a CMS Town Hall meeting. The discussion was led by a panel consisting of Long Range Plan Committee Chair Nancy Reid, CMS President Jacques Hurtubise, and CMS Director Johan Rudnick (who was partially obscured by a poinsetta).

“Innovation is the creation of better or more effective products, processes, technologies, or ideas that are accepted by markets, governments, and society. Innovation differs from invention in that innovation refers to the use of a new idea or method, whereas invention refers more directly to the creation of the idea or method itself.

I was happy today to learn that Canada Post issued a stamp honoring my Toronto colleague and Nobel Laureate John Polanyi. The stamp is issued as part of the celebration of the International Year of Chemistry.

Timeless and timely extracts from Science: The Endless Frontier by Vannevar Bush: Scientific Progress is Essential Advances in science when put to practical use mean more jobs, higher wages, shorter hours, more abundant crops, more leisure for recreation, for study, for learning how to live without the deadening drudgery which has been the burden of the common man for ages past.

I was troubled to learn recently that: 1. NSERC awarded far fewer postdocs and grad student fellowships in 2011 vs. 2010. The official statistics reveal that NSERC awarded less than half the number of PDFs in 2011 than were awarded in 2010.