Tapping biotech's human resources

Although Australia has some great researchers coming out of its universities, attracting and keeping scientists and biostatisticians local can be a problem, Pete Young finds.

Supplying the biotech sector with high quality tertiary graduates in the right numbers and the correct mix of disciplines is proving a difficult equation to balance. Especially when supply must be synchronised with a shifting spectrum of demand in the fast-moving sector. Solving the equation is a "$64 million dollar question with no quick answers in sight," says Mikael Hirsch, who, as CSIRO's biotechnology strategy coordinator, is responsible for shaping CSIRO's strategic biotech direction. One reason for the lack of easy answers is the sheer breadth of the biotech sector. "It is so broad and reaches into so many existing industries that is hard to say where it stops and starts," Hirsch says. A second complication is Australia's capacity to compete internationally for highly qualified science professionals. The value of the Australian dollar and the relatively low salary scales here "make it difficult to present a strong case for attracting skills from overseas," Hirsch says. Then there is the little matter of funding quality science. "Quality science is a key driver because quality science attracts quality people. There are a lot of areas in which we could do better but because we are a small isolated economy in the biotech game, we have to think hard [about where resources should be funnelled] and that is one of the real challenges."

Biostat brain drain Generalities aside, there are specific niches in biotech where demand routinely outstrips supply, according to industry participants. High on that list are bioinformatics and biostatistics -- both areas that demand skills integrating biology with information technology and mathematics. Jan Thomas, executive officer of the Australian Mathematical Society and the newly-established Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute, is relatively pessimistic about Australia's mathematical brain drain in general. After studying the balance between Australian-trained mathematicians who leave the country and those who return, she has concluded, "the general flow was all outward." Thomas documented the ebb and flow of mathematical talent across Australia's borders in a report entitled 'Mathematical Sciences looking for a Future', which led her to conclude the country was in the grip of a brain drain. She coined the phrase "kangaroo country" to describe a pattern in which overseas recruits "hopped in, looked at what was happening [in Australian mathematics] and hopped out again within 12 months. "A few stayed on but in general the kangaroo hop was not a very attractive development." She argues that some states have gone into "serious decline" in terms of developing strong flows of graduates in pure maths. That undercuts the supply of biostatisticians because "it is that type of person, who comes through with a strong maths background, who is the top type of person who can pick up statistics and biology and work together in an interdisciplinary way."

Money problems Thomas believes that pumping up the number of biostatisticians in Australia is hampered by two other problems. One is money, the other has to do with critical mass. At the moment, biostatisticians in the US are sitting at the top end of the salary pole, says Thomas. "The American Mathematics Society publishes annual salary reviews and I've noticed biostatistics people are getting far above what other mathematicians are getting and way beyond anything that can be paid in Australia," she says. That means attracting plentiful numbers of overseas biostatistics talent may be beyond the pocketbook of most universities. And the option of settling for a minimal number with only a few biostatisticians sprinkled through the university population is unlikely to appeal to biostatisticians themselves, she suggests: "Nobody wants to be the only biostatistician at a given university. Biostatisticians work in groups, which is something the administrators of Australian universities don't seem to realize." On the other hand, several positive developments have occurred in recent months on the mathematics landscape, which could potentially improve it, Thomas says. One was the Victorian government's support for an Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute, whose participants include most universities plus the Australian Bureau of Statistics and CSIRO. To date, the institute is being funded mainly by the Victorian government and the other participants, but if Education Minister Dr Brendan Nelson "also gave something as part of his higher education reform package, we really could start getting good people from overseas in key areas like biostats even if at this stage they only spent months in the country, rather than years," Thomas says. A second promising development is the successful bid to create a Centre for Mathematical and Statistical Modelling of Complex Systems sited in Melbourne as part of the national Centre of Excellence program. "It will build critical mass and clearly has the potential to affect areas such as biostatistics," Thomas says. "It has the capacity to attract some good postdocs who may come from overseas and stay, if mathematics in general is seen to be getting some support in Australia." Also helping to focus attention on the state of mathematics in Australia will be the International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics (www.iciam.org) scheduled to be held in Sydney in July. Run every four years as one of the peak events on the industry and applied mathematics conference calendar, it will give the field some valuable public exposure and showcase speakers such as leading bioinformatician Prof Terry Speed, who divides his time between Melbourne's Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and the University of California at Berkeley.

Skills pinch Meanwhile, structural biology and proteomics are nominated by the CSIRO's Hirsch as other domains in which skill pinches have surfaced. "In genomics, my perception is that we are keeping up but it is hard to be definite because it is clouded by the question of infrastructure needs," he says. To take a wider view, one vital training shortfall in biotech concerns the capacity to bridge the gap between high technology push and venture capital market pull, Hirsch says. There are not enough people able to integrate the domains of business and science. "Biotechnology is a strange field in that you need not just excellent skills in, say, microbiology, but also in legal and business issues -- plus the ability to pull teams of people together." Kamahl Singhe, manager of Biotechnology Australia's intellectual property policy section, agrees that commercialisation and finance training, though not classed as core scientific skills, now rank as a zone of deficiency for Australian biotech because "scientists need them in this day and age." Without them, the capacity to raise capital is hindered and the finance community lacks confidence in the ability of bioscience professionals to bring research to a successful commercial conclusion, he says. Hirsch says that universities have a significant role to play in meeting demand for a shifting spectrum of biotech skills but insists industry itself must also shoulder responsibility because "this is a lifelong learning situation -- the sector is evolving so fast that even players who are doing quite well need to be retrained." CSIRO is trying to meet its obligations with a "very active postdoctoral program" and by offering extensive training courses both inside and outside the biotech sector to address issues such as the science-business divide.

Steady supply Based on anecdotal evidence, Australia's biotech sector does not suffer from "glaring deficiencies" in basic, well-established skill sets such as molecular biology and immunology, according to Singhe. The supply of skilled personnel in those domains appears reasonably steady, says Singhe. Where deficiencies do exist, on word of mouth evidence, lies in new areas that are expanding as research programs mature. Singhe's job requires him to maintain close contacts with industry and he reports that some centres focused on fields such as stem cell research have had to turn to recruiting staff from overseas because of the difficulty in locating local sources of talent. Among the countries from which the recruits are being attracted are the US, Canada and Singapore, he says. "I think that one difficulty is that a lot of PhDs trained in Australia leave the country to work in leading overseas university labs or private companies. A certain percentage never come back while others after a few years might want to come home for family reasons and help fill some of the gaps in the skills base. The gaps would be wider except "we are looking at an industry that is hibernating at the moment," says Singhe. There are very few fresh publicly-listed biotechs springing up in Australia and demand has shrunk to the extent that some bioscience science practitioners -- molecular biologists, for example -- may even be in a state of oversupply.

Coordination needed Another facet of higher education's attempt to meet biotech demand involves making more efficient use of advanced teaching resources, which in Australia's small market are often in short supply. In areas such as computational biology, it makes sense to coordinate training resources which are both scarce and dispersed around the country, argues a leading practitioner in the field, Prof Mark Ragan. Ragan heads the computational biology and bioinformatics section at Queensland's leading biotech research centre, the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at the University of Queensland. He says a national effort could be launched to coordinate the advanced courses being offered in computational biology at different Australian universities. "Serious discussion is underway about the possibility of producing some sort of common course with components provided by several universities. It would deliver a specific program so students could enrol from anywhere in Australia and receive training that is sourced out of a number of universities." The tertiary education institutions most likely to take part in the program would include ANU, the University of Queensland and the University of Melbourne. The number of advanced students capable of taking part in the program would not be large - an elite of perhaps a dozen might take part. The program could be structured to allow them to access "virtual" courses via high bandwidth telecommunications links or by physically moving students between participating universities. Either alternative would allow scarce Australian training resources to be concentrated in a cost-effective manner, Ragan says.