The lowdown on high-profile science

From institutes with fewer than 100 staff to the CSIRO with several thousand, the vast majority of Australia's life scientists are employed by research institutes. Among the dozens of research institutes found across the country are numerous internationally renowned centres of scientific excellence like the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI), small focused institutes like Melbourne's Bionic Ear Institute and government-owned agricultural institutes like the South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI).

By all accounts, Australia's research institutes are highly successful, attracting a large proportion of competitive research funding, from both government sources and non-government sources including grants from charitable organisations and increasingly from foreign funding sources such as the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). Many of them have international reputations for scientific excellence and boast international collaborations and partnerships.

Australia's strength in medical research is commonly claimed by scientists, politicians and industry to far outweigh our comparative size, and this is reflected in the scope of research institutes, some of them employing several hundred researchers. In addition, many of the larger research institutes are spinning out biotechnology companies regularly.

Increasingly too, there are research institutes focusing on more applied or commercially strategic aspects of the life sciences, including the Institute of Molecular Bioscience at the University of Queensland, and the Centre for Biomolecular Science and Drug Discovery, also in Queensland.

While agricultural research institutes in Australia may have a lower profile nationally, in part because they are run by government agencies, they are well known internationally. Groups like the reproductive and cloning technology team at SARDI in South Australia are leading the field in developing new technologies, and the roles played by SARDI and other state agricultural institutes in the Cooperative Research Centres underscore the high quality of research performed by these institutes.

Critical mass

By far and away the biggest advantage of research in an institute is having a critical mass of scientists, often working on a specific area such as cancer or plant breeding. By having researchers with a similar focus or with complimentary skills in the same facility, the potential for collaborative research to solve bigger problems is increased.

"The days of working as a lone investigator in a university department are gone," says Prof Peter Klinken, who heads the Western Australian Institute of Medical Research (WAIMR), one of Australia's youngest research institutes.

One reason for this, he says, is the growing encouragement for scientists to form collaborations and networks in order to get substantial amounts of funding from national funding bodies like the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and the Australian Research Council (ARC).

Klinken's incentive in forming WAIMR, which was founded by the University of Western Australia, Royal Perth Hospital and Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, was bolstered by a belief in increased collaboration and recognition of the need to bring together like-minded people with complimentary expertise to act as a focal point for research activities.

Having a critical mass of researchers in an institute also helps to raise the profile of scientists both within Australia and internationally.

"It's a reality of today's medical research that if you want to be internationally recognised you must have a critical mass of researchers, facilities and equipment. This means that it is going to happen in a research institute," says Prof John Shine, executive director of Sydney's Garvan Institute of Medical Research. The critical mass of scientists in research institutes means that they are more competitive and hence get more grants, he says.

Synergy

Prof Bob Williamson, director of the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, says that at their best, synergies in research institutes can be enormous. "The best example in Australia was the team that Sir Gustav Nossal put together at the WEHI, who all worked in wonderful synergy and the whole was much greater than the sum of its researchers," Williamson says.

Williamson is trying to develop a similar atmosphere at the Murdoch, with linkages between the public healthcare sector, paediatrics, genetics and genomics to look at problems such as the interaction between genes and the environment. But he says achieving the kind of scientific synergy he is looking for is a slow process.

"For this to work, people have to have confidence in their colleagues and trust the quality of their research and this takes time," he explains.

Research institutes can also take advantage of particular environments to build unique research facilities, such as the translational research undertaken at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Institute, which brings cutting-edge science to bear on clinical problems such as prediction of patient outcome.

Focused management

"It's fantastically useful to have clinical and research programs side by side," says the Peter Mac's director of research, Prof David Bowtell. "Having clinical input is just essential."

One particular advantage of the institute environment, particularly in the biomedical sector, is the absence of layers of bureaucracy. Many research institutes are governed by a small board of directors, in contrast to the complex governance structure of universities. "We have a single focused board and management -- it's easier to deal with and more straightforward," says Prof Evan Simpson, the Director of Melbourne's Prince Henry's Institute of Medical Research, which is affiliated with Monash University.

A different situation is found, however, in agricultural science institutes, which are predominantly operated by government agencies. For example, the South Australian Department of Primary Industries operates SARDI, and similar research facilities are operated by other states.

Most institutes have also limited teaching responsibilities, usually restricted to taking on honours and post-graduate students. As a rule, medical research institutes hold affiliations with universities and/or teaching hospitals, and scientists at the institute hold joint appointments with appropriate university departments. "Since our primary function is research, we don't have to spend a lot of time teaching undergraduates," says Simpson.

But Williamson says that there are also disadvantages to the lack of contact with undergraduates, with limited opportunities for institute-based researchers to make students aware of the newest research coming out of institutes.

His point is echoed by WEHI's Prof Nic Nicola, who says that research institutes often find it difficult to recruit post-graduate students, as they are not exposed to the institutes as they go through university.

The biggest disadvantage facing Australian research institutes is probably the stability of the institute structure, coupled with a lack of infrastructure support. Relying as they do on competitive grants, philanthropic donations and industry relationships, the independent research institute is inherently rather unstable. "If grants go up or down, you gain or lose people," says Nicola. "People can feel a bit exposed in terms of their employment."

Consolidating infrastructure

At the heart of the matter is the lack of infrastructure support attached to competitive grants. While universities get a large part of their infrastructure support from the Federal government, research institutes receive variable amounts of infrastructure funding from state governments. "Research institutes as a group believe it is very important for the Federal government to have an infrastructure component attached to grants," says Shine. He says that while the Federal government is aware of the issue, and is working on it, there is a concern that the states will reduce their responsibility if the Federal increases their support.

But the formation of research institutes can also streamline the infrastructure requirements by providing a central facility rather than duplications of effort. In Western Australia, for example, the State Agricultural Biotechnology Centre has been set up by Murdoch University, University of WA, Curtin University and the WA Department of Agriculture to act as a kind of "research hotel" providing facilities and platform technologies on a user pays basis.

"It's incredibly cost-effective," says Prof Mike Jones, who heads the centre. With a core staff of only five people, it houses around 110 researchers, plus another 90 who have access to various facilities, including microarray and proteomic platform technologies and greenhouse facilities for transgenic research.