Professoriat Dinner Discussion

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Professoriat Dinner Discussion

• How to cope with likely government funding
  retrenchment?
• Link with large caches of finance other than
  Government
• Top-level industry partnerships joint research,
  CPD, Manchester Consultancy
• China for international students
• Alumni usually for specific projects
• Etc. etc. etc.
• Cut areas where impact is too low?
• Promoting excellence is the sine qua non
• What gets more brilliant people to come to
  Manchester?
• What is Manchester special for?
• Must invest in excellent people even/especially
  if money is tight

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Professoriat Dinner Discussion

• New university has a much more centralised/top-dow
  n style than its predecessors
• More of a corporate structure less a community
  of scholars
• University?Faculty?School?Group
• More managerial hurdles to jump
• Group/school silo mentality?

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Professoriat Dinner Discussion

• Manchester United why is it so successful?
• Did not start as one of best-known teams in world
• In a relatively unprepossessing city
• In a rather unattractive area
• But achieved a virtuous circle where success
  breeds success and generated resources
• excellent talent spotters
• active youth policy in addition to recruitment of
  big stars
• known for attractive style of play
• excellent club atmosphere players want to play
  for the team
• Differences in any one premier league match may
  not be huge but become so when integrated over
  time!

4
Manchester present cf. Manchester past

• 50 years ago Manchester Physics Astronomy was
  in the international premier league
• the named lecture theatres
• Rochester Butler
• Lovell
• RAE rating tells us we are now, on average, in
  with the UK pack
• If there has been a relative decline - how has it
  happened?

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What are great academic departments like?

• Tradition of great scientists who have made
  significant contributions to their field
• Currently full of scientists of international
  standing
• who are happy to stay !
• Tradition of excellence at all costs
• never settling for less
• Recognise that excellence needs incentives
  academic freedom and personal space
• - not too much teaching
• - not too much administration
• - not too rigid a structure in which to
  operate

• Successful researchers are often mavericks !

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Types of laboratories1

• Type A all discoveries made here !
• Cognitive High scientific diversity
• Social Well-connected to external
  networks in diverse fields
• Resources Access to new instrumentation and
  funding for high risk
• research
• Leadership High cognitive complexity
  confidence and motivation
• Excellent grasp of ways in which different
  fields may
• be integrated and ability to move research
  in that
• direction
• 1 J.R. Hollingsworth in Knowledge, Communication
  and Creativity, ed. A. Sales M. Fournier, Sage
  Publications, London Thousand Oaks California,
  2007

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Types of laboratories1

• Type B no discoveries made here !
• Cognitive Moderately low scientific diversity
• Social Well connected to external
  networks in a single
• discipline
• Resources Limited funding for high risk
  research
• Leadership Low cognitive complexity limited
  inclination for high
• risk research
• Not greatly concerned with
  integrating different fields
• 1 J.R. Hollingsworth in Knowledge,
  Communication and Creativity, ed. A. Sales M.
  Fournier, Sage Publications, London Thousand
  Oaks California, 2007

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Innovation and Cognitive Complexity

• Innovation is associated with cognitive
  complexity rather than formal measures of
  intelligence
• Cognitive complexity is the ability to
  understand the world in complex ways a capacity
  to observe and understand the connectivity among
  phenomena in multiple fields.
• Need to encourage this in ourselves and recruit
  those who display it.

J.R. Hollingsworth in Knowledge, Communication
and Creativity, ed. A. Sales M. Fournier, Sage
Publications, London Thousand Oaks California,
2007
9
Caltech

• Research and graduate students are the core
  businesses and excellence is everything
• - only 284 faculty, 1200 grad. students but
  100s
• millions turnover
• - and 31 Nobel Prizes
• Research condensations are more personal
• - internal competition between PI academics
• Teaching load is seriously less (graduate
  students as TAs !)
• Well funded programme of visiting professors with
  congenial conditions of stay
• Access to private sources of funds from Alumni

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So. a few thoughts

• How can we make Manchester, and PA in
  particular, a first choice in the world for an
  outstanding scientist
• Build a culture of excellence and a reputation as
  a hot-bed of new ideas
• Allow excellent people space to maximise their
  research creativity
• Direct financial reward for grant-winning, for
  further pump-priming activities on their own
  initiative (overhead return)
• But seek to square the circle of personal freedom
  with collegial culture

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A few more ideas

• The School Research Lunches and Away Days and
  post Away-Days are a good innovation
• lead to intellectual collegiality and possibly
  serendipitous new ideas
• Where are the future Nobel Prizes going to come
  from?
• Fundamental physics/astronomy (74)
• Physics with a wide range of applications (26)
• Related recruitment strategies
• Fields in which an international community is
  interested (for citations)
• Fields with wider economy applications

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N.B. an era of focussed funding

• Recent government changes
• Lord Drayson will oversee UK (2B) military
  research spending in addition to his civil
  science responsibilities.
• The recent changes also merged science and
  business in the new Department for Business
  Innovation and Skills.
• Sir Martin Rees With the right steering, the
  two roles have great potential to complement one
  another and boost science in the UK."

• BBC Science Web-site 9 June 09

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A few further ideas

• A new international post-doctoral Fellowship
  programme - Manchester Fellowships
• Why not generate our own international
  competition ?
• Perhaps start with one Fellow per School
• An internationally-known visiting scholar
  programme Manchester Scholar
• Make us the most congenial place in the world for
  a scientific visit for international leaders

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Summary

• No one route need to create a virtuous circle
  where success feeds on itself like Man U.
• Must make Manchester special cf. our
  competition
• Culture of only excellence in recruitment and
  retention
• Clearly lower teaching load for successful
  researchers
• Direct overhead return to successful researchers
• Encourage cognitive complexity community of
  scholars
• lunchtime seminars and post-away days are good
• Attract our own outstanding talent via
  Manchester Fellowships
• Attract visiting scholars via Manchester
  Scholarships
• Is the present administrative structure optimum ?
  
• Is the current mix of research topics optimum ?

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END
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Some Unity Questions

• How do you plan to increase the number of
  research students and research income, in
  particular industrial funding?
• How will you encourage enterprise and develop
  IP?
• What are the plans for the encouragement and
  development of cross-school and cross-Faculty
  research initiatives?
• How will the School review and develop research
  centres within and across schools, including the
  winding down of centres that no longer produce
  high quality research?
• In last 5 years strived to answer and/or add
  cognitive complexity/cross-school
  interdisciplinarity via proposals for
• Manchester Institute for Astronomy and Particle
  Physics
• Jodrell Bank Institute
• Centre for Radio Terahertz Technology
• MSc. in Technologies for Imaging Radio
  Astronomy, Earth Observation, Defence and
  Security

None of these were successful prescience or
risk-averse conservatism ?
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Other points

• key to development is inspiring the next
  generation that research is the lifeblood of
  both creativity and real learning.
• Ridiculous to appoint Nobel Prize winners. They
  have achieved all that they can. UoM has not
  been good over many years at recognising stars in
  its own firmament always looking for stars
  independently
• Need to bump into people regularly to get
  interactions
• 2006/7 Caltech received grant, contract, and
  subcontract awards valued at 268 million.
• The Endowment Pool supports approximately 18 of
  the Institutes operating budget.