12 ms·

I have to second this. EU-funded research projects seem to be quite inefficient in at least the few cases I know of. You need several universities and companies

by raphman 13y ago

I have to second this. EU-funded research projects seem to be quite inefficient in at least the few cases I know of. You need several universities and companies - distributed over as many EU countries as possible - to cooperate and communicate. This apparently works some of the time. Each university gets funding for one or two PhD students. In the cases I observed, these PhD students had to produce an enormous amount of written "deliverables" all the time. Their research project was so different from what the rest of the group was doing, that they had more or less nobody to discuss their work with. Other, nationally funded research projects have always seemed more effective and efficient to me.

mjn 13y ago
There's definitely overhead, and simply choosing not to get into that game is a legitimate choice (often a good one, if other funding is available). How it's managed can make the experience differ greatly though. One of the consortium partners is supposed to be the managing partner, and if they do a good job, the scientific partners should be in much better shape. Of course, they don't always. I haven't done a deep investigation, but anecdotally the projects that have worked best for us have a managing partner that is a research institute, not a university, i.e. full-time researchers who are used to managing large projects and have substantial administrative support for doing so. For example CERTH (http://www.certh.gr/root.en.aspx http://www.certh.gr/root.en.aspx) do that kind of thing well. This is kind of analogous to doing a big DARPA project in the U.S. with a partner like BBN or SRI, who know how to handle DARPA, are staffed to do so, and can take care of the interface. I think, though this is more speculative, that it also helps if the managing partner is in southern Europe, contrary to the usual stereotype about efficiency. Mostly because costs are lower: if a managing partner in Denmark is given €200k/yr, we can hire 3-4 staff members, while the Greek managing partner we worked with hired 10 staff members on that same budget (some researchers and some secretarial). They took care of nearly all the project's paperwork as a result. I think people in bureaucratic countries are also better at navigating the EU bureaucracy quickly. The administrative staff here (Denmark) are really slow at it and in a sense take it too seriously, not realizing that Brussels paperwork is not the same as Danish paperwork. Much of it is filler, not something you should agonize over and spend a lot of time filling out (some of it is important, but you need to recognize which is which to get anything done). With this kind of arrangement, full-time staff who know how to do such things should be writing the reports, not PhD students. I'm not sure we're even allowed to have PhD students do that kind of work; it might be seen by the PhD oversight board as misusing them. Nationally funded projects are definitely lower-overhead, but there's also much less money for basic science, at least here. If you're developing smart-grid technology or wind power, there is a ton of targeted research funding. If you're doing theoretical CS, not so much. Whereas the EU explicitly has blue-skies research calls, and is currently pouring money into fairly long-term stuff like computational creativity.
- pcrh 13y ago
  There are obviously better and worse ways to deal with bureaucracy, but I find it amusing your suggestion that one solution is to outsource it to countries known for bloated bureaucracies. I'm sure Greek scientists are by and large as good as German or Danish ones, so maybe the science should be sent to Southern Europe and the bureaucracy sent to ever-efficient Germany. Or better yet, do away with all that "filler".
  - mjn 13y ago
    It's certainly not a solution, more of a coping process. If the EU has a bunch of bureaucracy, having a project managed by someone who knows how to navigate bureaucracy streamlines things. Alternatives are opting out of EU projects entirely (possible for some people, not for others), or revamping the EU funding process (difficult, way above my level of authority to do anything about).
    - pcrh 13y ago
      A bit of revamping is probably in order. Scientists are naturally a very mobile group and will usually work wherever the facilities/environment is favorable. Certain pan-European organizations have a very strong reputation, such as The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL, link below), and the EU funds the Joint European Torus (link below). These institutes have a very mixed national contingent. So... if the motive of EU funding is to promote transnational collaboration, then the approach they take is needlessly complicated. A simpler possibly solution would be to fund "magnet" institutes (which could be based in existing centers of excellence, or created de novo) that have a requirement to recruit from diverse EU states. http://www.embl.de/ http://www.embl.de/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_European_Torus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_European_Torus

by raphman 13y ago

mjn 13y ago

There's definitely overhead, and simply choosing not to get into that game is a legitimate choice (often a good one, if other funding is available). How it's managed can make the experience differ greatly though. One of the consortium partners is supposed to be the managing partner, and if they do a good job, the scientific partners should be in much better shape. Of course, they don't always. I haven't done a deep investigation, but anecdotally the projects that have worked best for us have a managing partner that is a research institute, not a university, i.e. full-time researchers who are used to managing large projects and have substantial administrative support for doing so. For example CERTH (http://www.certh.gr/root.en.aspx http://www.certh.gr/root.en.aspx) do that kind of thing well. This is kind of analogous to doing a big DARPA project in the U.S. with a partner like BBN or SRI, who know how to handle DARPA, are staffed to do so, and can take care of the interface. I think, though this is more speculative, that it also helps if the managing partner is in southern Europe, contrary to the usual stereotype about efficiency. Mostly because costs are lower: if a managing partner in Denmark is given €200k/yr, we can hire 3-4 staff members, while the Greek managing partner we worked with hired 10 staff members on that same budget (some researchers and some secretarial). They took care of nearly all the project's paperwork as a result. I think people in bureaucratic countries are also better at navigating the EU bureaucracy quickly. The administrative staff here (Denmark) are really slow at it and in a sense take it too seriously, not realizing that Brussels paperwork is not the same as Danish paperwork. Much of it is filler, not something you should agonize over and spend a lot of time filling out (some of it is important, but you need to recognize which is which to get anything done). With this kind of arrangement, full-time staff who know how to do such things should be writing the reports, not PhD students. I'm not sure we're even allowed to have PhD students do that kind of work; it might be seen by the PhD oversight board as misusing them. Nationally funded projects are definitely lower-overhead, but there's also much less money for basic science, at least here. If you're developing smart-grid technology or wind power, there is a ton of targeted research funding. If you're doing theoretical CS, not so much. Whereas the EU explicitly has blue-skies research calls, and is currently pouring money into fairly long-term stuff like computational creativity.

pcrh 13y ago
There are obviously better and worse ways to deal with bureaucracy, but I find it amusing your suggestion that one solution is to outsource it to countries known for bloated bureaucracies. I'm sure Greek scientists are by and large as good as German or Danish ones, so maybe the science should be sent to Southern Europe and the bureaucracy sent to ever-efficient Germany. Or better yet, do away with all that "filler".
- mjn 13y ago
  It's certainly not a solution, more of a coping process. If the EU has a bunch of bureaucracy, having a project managed by someone who knows how to navigate bureaucracy streamlines things. Alternatives are opting out of EU projects entirely (possible for some people, not for others), or revamping the EU funding process (difficult, way above my level of authority to do anything about).
  - pcrh 13y ago
    A bit of revamping is probably in order. Scientists are naturally a very mobile group and will usually work wherever the facilities/environment is favorable. Certain pan-European organizations have a very strong reputation, such as The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL, link below), and the EU funds the Joint European Torus (link below). These institutes have a very mixed national contingent. So... if the motive of EU funding is to promote transnational collaboration, then the approach they take is needlessly complicated. A simpler possibly solution would be to fund "magnet" institutes (which could be based in existing centers of excellence, or created de novo) that have a requirement to recruit from diverse EU states. http://www.embl.de/ http://www.embl.de/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_European_Torus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_European_Torus