Singapore Academies South-East Asia Fellowship (SASEAF) Programme 2024

The SG Academies South-East Asia Fellowship (SASEAF) Programme aims to attract bright postgraduate researchers from South-East Asia to Singapore research institutions for a 2-year long fellowship. It is administered by three academies in Singapore - the Singapore National Academy of Science (SNAS), together with the Academy of Medicine Singapore (AMS), and the Academy of Engineering Singapore (SAEng) - and funded by the National Research Foundation (NRF).

Applications should prepare a short (up to 2 pages) research proposal in consultation with a host faculty member. While applicants may propose any field of research done in Singapore’s research institutions, the topics of Infectious Diseases, Population Health/Public Health, and Sustainability, including Urban Agriculture will be favoured in the current round.

The successful applicant will receive a monthly stipend of up to SG$6,500, relocation allowance, and access to professional development and networking opportunities during their time in Singapore.

For more information including the application procedure and documents required, please check out the official website. If you are interested in having me as a host PI, please contact me well in advance of the application deadline of 30th November so that we have sufficient time to prepare a competitive proposal. A list of past awardees can be found here.

 

Academic working conditions

Comments on a Comment published a few weeks ago in Nature Human Behaviour: Quality research needs good working conditions.

There is "a lack of permanent positions with dedicated research funding, leading to an overreliance on project-based funding with short-term research positions." Unless one lands a tenured position, the longest term of reliable employment one is likely to encounter is during the PhD studies (3+ years). Postdocs depend on periodic renewal of short-term 1 or 2-year contracts and face the prospect of probably needing to move to a different city or country if they need to take up a new position. It's hard.

The relation between turnover and research quality is nuanced. Yes, in certain circumstances pressure can foster creativity and productivity, but the threat of non-renewal is not the only form of pressure that can be applied. Internal project deadlines ("if we don't have a promising result by x, let's try a different line of research"). Performance bonuses. Conference submission deadlines. There are many possibilities.

On the flip side, there are many examples of stagnant research institutions dominated by faculty members nearing retirement with no incentives to undertake quality new research. The problem with research is that it isn't always successful. It is hard for an outsider to distinguish hard but unfruitful work from slacking off.

Unfortunately the terms of employment contracts are typically controlled by upper university management. Thus, even those tenured faculty who would prefer to have a more stable team composition have little power to effect change.

 

Open access in physics

In the news last week: The US government will require federally-funded research to be immediately free to read upon publication. 

The Brief provides a detailed discussion of the planned changes. 

A perspective from physics publishers including the American Physical Society can be found in a recently prepared a white paper on open access publishing. The white paper was prepared in light of growing interest in open science, including open publishing.

In Europe, one model of open publishing being promoted by several funding agencies is Plan S (see coverage in Nature last year here). Plan S remains controversial and has attracted criticism for several reasons, including lack of academic freedom for researchers to choose the most appropriate publishing venue, penalising junior researchers who may not have the funds to pay the (large) open access publication fees, and rules that adversely impact non-profit scholarly societies.

Some thoughts on open publishing as a grant-starved researcher and part-time editor for the American Physical Society:

Academic freedom in where we choose to publish is important - any research article will have a particular audience in mind, and we should be free to (try to) publish in a journal with the best visibility to the intended audience. Many activists argue that publicly-funded research out to be free to read for any members of the public to read. This goal is already largely served by preprint servers and most existing publishing agreements, which allow author-prepared versions of the article to be made freely available on the arXiv, a repository provided by their institution, or even their personal website. Even in the case of publishers strictly enforcing an embargo, one is free to contact the authors directly via email if one really needs the journal-published version. Most authors would be more than happy to share their work.

Under open access plans the author is forced to pay to publish. Open access mandates severely curtail academic freedom - publication charges will restrict the choice of journal, potentially forcing authors to publish in a cheaper, low-visibility journal. This will adversely impact junior researchers, smaller and less well-funded institutions, and researchers from lower-income countries.

Why not just force open access journals to have lower publication fees? Aren't they simply charging to ask referees to reports for free and to upload a PDF on a web server? Why does this typically cost thousands of dollars?

In defense of seemingly-high open access article publication charges, one major contribution to the high costs is (and/or should) support the salaries of the journal editorial staff, who have an important role in selecting and vetting reviewers. In the case of many newly-established for-profit open access publishers, this important task is not handled by qualified scientists. However, unless one has a reasonable knowledge of the research subject, one will not have an idea on which referees are credible.

Another important difference between the subscription and open access models is that the open access publication charges need to also cover all manuscripts that are not published by the journal! The more selective the journal, the more articles will be considered and eventually rejected. The published articles need to cover the cost of processing the rejected articles. Under the subscription model the subscription fee can be tailored towards that institution's volume of manuscript submissions.

Since rejected articles generate no revenue, for-profit publishers have an incentive to publish everything and it quickly becomes a race to the bottom. So, why not just publish everything, and let researchers decide which works are most important? For a start, this is already handled (without the author paying) by preprint venues such as arXiv. We publish in journals to make our work visible. Visibility requires selectivity so that the most important research is highlighted. We don't have time to read everything that appears in our research area. If journals no longer enforce selectivity, we will end up focusing on reading works from authors we are familiar with - those from high profile, well-established groups. This will end up penalising junior researchers and those from institutions without a well-established brand.

It should be emphasized that open access is just one small part of the open science movement. Rather than penalising established scholarly societies that have a good track record of fostering excellent science, I think funding agencies should focus on broadening the support and dissemination of other styles of academic writing - the academic grey literature. For example, particularly in the life and medical sciences there is a bias towards publishing significant results, resulting in the replication crisis.

Another form of academic writing that is not widely made available for the public to read are white papers and grant proposals. I think this is one area where openness could be valuable not just for working researchers, but also for historians of science as a means of tracking the evolution of different ideas and research fields. 

Many funding agencies still do not even provide basic statistics on their grant programmes, such as the number of applications in a funding round and the success rate. It would be very interesting to see more detailed statistics (e.g. success rates versus research areas, perhaps aggregated over multiple years) as a way to track changes in the interests of the applicants and funding agencies.

It would also be valuable to see the full proposals funded by the grant agencies, most likely after am embargo period - perhaps the length of the project. This would be more beneficial to the public for getting an idea on the kind of research they are funding through their taxes - journal articles are aimed at a highly specialised audience, whereas grant proposals are usually aimed at a much broader audience. Moreover, early career researchers would be able to see what kinds of proposals are funded by a given agency, helping them to judge whether their applications will be competitive or a waste of time. Under the current system we need to ask professors directly for examples of successful applications.

Research funding in Korea

Earlier this month I had the pleasure of visiting former colleagues and collaborators in Korea. This was my first time delivering in-person seminars since covid and I had forgotten how invigorating and inspiring it is to present and discuss physics face-to-face.

One issue that I learned about during my trip was the lack of stability in science funding in Korea - research grants are typically reviewed (and funding levels adjusted) every year, and changes in government lead to dramatic shifts in funding priorities.

The Institute for Basic Science (IBS) was established in 2011 with the aim of providing a stable environment for carrying out long-term fundamental research.

After an initial 8-year grace period to give directors enough time to set up their centres, their performance is reviewed to determine whether funding should continue (see this 2020 perspective article for further background).

However, passing this review does give centres stability to continue to pursue their ambitious research goals. Subsequent performance reviews are planned every 3 years, with the potential for significant cuts in funding or even the entire centre shutting down.

A related issue is the puzzling combination of the centralisation of leadership while reducing the autonomy of the centre directors.

Presently tenure is limited to centre directors; if a director resigns, retires, or is hit by a bus the whole centre is shut down unless a suitable external replacement can be recruited. Meanwhile, team leaders on (on paper) tenure-track positions are not given the stability of tenure and the opportunity potentially replace directors reaching mandatory retirement age. Lasting institutions require strong base of staff at all different levels and clear avenues for career progression.

Despite directors being so essential to the continued operation of the research centres, government policy dictates that the hiring of research staff be delegated to an external committee. Moreover, candidates identities should be hidden from this committee, although publication lists can still be included in the "blinded" CVs! I understand this puzzling policy is not limited to IBS, but also applies to other government-funded research institutes.

It is remarkable that despite all these pressures and constraints researchers at IBS are still able to carry out world-class research!

More on the academic job market

Another perspective on academic jobs was published in Science a few weeks ago: As professors struggle to recruit postdocs, calls for structural change in academia intensify.

Finding suitably-qualified postdocs to hire is a challenge, especially amidst competition from quantum startups that can afford to offer significantly higher salaries. 

Grant funding rules often prevent professors from offering competitive salaries.

Overhead fees claimed by universities are growing faster than postdoc salaries (NUS's overhead costs increased from 20% to 30% last year, if I recall correctly).

Something has to change.

The great resignation in physics

Yesterday Nature published a feature article asking "Has the great resignation hit academia?" The article mostly focuses on experiences of researchers in the humanities and life sciences, but they are equally relevant to physics. Some snippets:

"Grievances include a lack of support, increased workloads, ..., and salaries that have not kept up with cost of living." 

Unofficially, it seems that the salaries of fresh postdocs in Singapore have not increased significantly since 2015, despite rising costs of living, especially rent. Frustratingly, professors seem to be powerless to address this due to postdoc salaries being fixed by upper management or funding agency rules. Consequently it is very hard to attract and retain junior researchers.

"A 2018 study predicted that higher education would lose half to two-thirds of its academic workforce to retirement, career burnout or job dissatisfaction within five years."

"By May 2021, one in five academic jobs in Australia had been cut."

The sacking of Australian research staff is particularly galling given that upper management and administration seem to be doing better than ever. With the boom in quantum technologies many Australian researchers are realizing they can keep doing the same physics under much better working conditions in spin-off companies including Q-CTRL, Quantum Brilliance, Nomad Atomics, and Diraq.

Cuts to ANU Physics

Research funding shortfall triggers 25% cut to ANU physics department

Australian universities were hit particularly hard by covid: A large proportion of their research funding came from international student fees, and international student numbers plummeted due to the border closure.

 

Budget cuts forced the Australian National University's physics department to cut 25% of its staff and merge its ten departments into five. 

 

As a graduate of ANU physics this is sad to see; nowhere else in Australia could one find such a breadth of expertise. Breadth is important because undergraduates often have no idea in which area they will end up specialising. For example, a bad experience with an optics lab in high school made me swear off anything to do with optics and photonics in university; I even skipped the (recommended) 2nd year optics course. My mind was changed by a 3rd year research project which showed me how the subject had plenty of interesting theoretical and numerical problems for a theorist.

It is appalling that funding agencies would rather dole out money for new buildings than pay salaries for those working inside. For context, ANU physics has just finished the construction of a new building. ANU has also carried out extensive redevelopments of the campus since I graduated, with several examples of old but functional or quite new buildings being demolished to make way for redevelopment.

The changing face of science philanthropy

Science published an editorial earlier this month on the changing priorities and methods of science philanthropy: New goals for science philanthropy.

The article discusses how growing priorities among donors are to work with public institutes and funding agencies to identify research areas where philanthropy can make the most impact, and to support researchers underrepresented in funding allocations from traditional sources. It is estimated that a staggering 42% of funding for basic science at US institutes is funded by philanthropy.

Each month NUS circulates a list of grant opportunities. Most private sources of funding are focused on the life sciences, particularly research into various diseases. 

How can the physical sciences attract more philanthropic funding? Two observations:

First, donors want to see meaningful impact in their lifetime. This is particularly challenging for physics, where most basic research does not lead to real world applications, and if it does it may take decades. For example, fusion power has been only 10-20 years away since the 1950s. Unfortunately it is impossible to control the impact of a specific research project.

Second, donors prefer to fund areas to which they have a personal connection. The biggest donors to the physical sciences are from those with experience in this area. For example, after obtaining a PhD in mathematics Jim Simons spent a decade in academia before turning to finance and making his fortune. Similarly, Fred Kavli had a background in engineering and Yuri Milner (founder of the Breakthrough Prize) originally worked as a physicist.

One way forward discussed in the article is to provide opportunities for research beyond traditional venues, for example by setting up independent research centres such as the Flatiron Institute. This not only avoids the entranched bureaucracy and overheadss of high-profile universities, but also gives the donor more control over the culture and expenditure of the centre. This seems a better alternative to funding lavish prizes that are more about recognising existing research impact than bringing about tomorrow's research breakthroughs.  

Australia's scientific brain drain

This opinion piece published in the Sydney Morning Herald the other day outlines a common experience for many researchers in Australia - the lack of a coherent government research and innovation strategy forces PhD graduates overseas for postdoctoral research. Many never return.

I don't want to repeat what is already said in this article, so I will instead add a few more examples of mismanagement I've seen in recent years:

• Multiple recipients of highly competitive Australian Research Council grants have had to wait for more than a year for their Australian work visas to be approved. Your project was ranked in the top 10% of submissions and "enhances the scale and focus of research in Australian Government priority areas", but you'll have to wait at the back of the visa queue, thanks!
• During the height of the covid pandemic foreigners were basically barred from entering Australia (requiring a visa to be approved, travel ban exemption, and one of few seats on incoming flights). At the same time, many Australians working in postdoctoral positions overseas decided to return (at great cost) and were desperate to find a local research job. Inflexible funding rules meant that certain research positions were being limited to candidates not in Australia and unable to travel there.
• The current government is prioritizing funding projects that can establish links between research and local industry. In many promising research areas there is no local industry to speak of, leading to world-class scientific proposals not being funded. And I'm not talking about the ARC Linkage grants (which are aimed at funding these kinds of partnerships), this is in relation to the Discovery Programme, which is supposed to fund pure science.

To sum up, I can respect that different governments may have different priorities for funding (or not funding) certain research. But it's appalling to see so many examples of policy being implemented so poorly.