“For me, it’s about excellence in research”
Christian Wolfrum has been Vice President for Research at ETH Zurich since the beginning of the year. What are the next challenges for research and how does he propose to tackle them?
How do you like being ETH Vice President for Research?
Christian Wolfrum: This job is the best one I can imagine. Research at ETH Zurich is excellent and of a remarkably high international standard. All the more reason for me to advocate for our researchers and to ensure that basic research retains its status.
What strategy do you pursue regarding research policy?
For me, the unalterable principle is the consistent promotion of excellence in research.
What does research excellence mean to you?
I’m talking about cutting-edge research that fundamentally expands existing knowledge. It manifests itself in all aspects of the scientific endeavour, in the questions, the methods, the results, the type of collaboration and science communication. Research excellence has many dimensions: Besides the individual personality of the researchers, their ideas, and their research activities, the surrounding conditions play a major role. Likewise, integrity and ethics in research are key components and a prerequisite for achieving excellence in research and innovation. Finally, research excellence requires time and patience and thus a stable funding in the long term.
Why is excellence essential?
Excellence in research is ETH’s raison d’être. It creates an environment that attracts students, researchers and companies. If our level of research declines, the quality of our teaching and knowledge transfer will decline as well.
How do you see the relationship between basic research and applied research?
At ETH Zurich, we are very strong in basic research and applied research alike. But where we really shine is in linking them together – that’s why it’s extremely important for us that both of these coexist.
Nevertheless, you caution that basic research should not lose its status.
Basic research is essential, as it lays the foundation for great innovations. I’m not saying that it takes priority over applied research, but I’m seeing it play less of a role in policy debates and its relevance is not always understood. Even in research funding, it’s coming under pressure. However, top-notch research funding supports both types of research equally – this has been a strength of Swiss research funding to date and must remain so.
To what extent is the pressure on basic research rising?
Policymakers and funding agencies increasingly expect basic research to have an immediate benefit or link to a potential application. But that’s not how it works. Basic research adds value to the economy, but it doesn’t immediately deliver technology- and market-ready products. No one can predict when it will produce a usable result, but experience tells us this happens very often. This is why funding ought not to neglect basic research, and why research should not be funded according to economic criteria, but according to research excellence.
“Anyone who passes an ERC evaluation is demonstrably among the top researchers. Switzerland can neither replace nor compensate for this seal of approval.”Christian Wolfrum
One subject currently under discussion is how the Swiss National Science Foundation’s research funding is developing. What’s your view?
As long as the Swiss Confederation doesn’t reduce funding for research and the National Science Foundation provides equal funding for basic and applied research, the Swiss funding system will remain excellent. However, if translational and applied research were to be promoted more strongly in the future and this promotion were to be at the expense of basic research, ETH would not welcome this. I also unequivocally reject the original plan to reduce the National Research Council, which evaluates the research projects submitted to the SNSF, down to “between 30 and 80 members” from its current 100. Fortunately, the SNSF has gone back over the books, and now the National Research Council is to have “a maximum of 80 members”. We’ll keep an eye on what that means as we go forward.
Why are you critical of a smaller National Research Council?
For me, it’s about excellence in research. The SNSF’s Research Council decides on applications from all over Switzerland. To do this, it must be broadly based, as it has been in the past, and cover all areas of research. Only funding bodies with a broad range of expertise really succeed in recognising and promoting excellent research. We see this on a small scale with the ETH Research Commission, and on a large scale, we see it particularly well with the European Research Council, or ERC. The ERC is a prime example to the world of how excellence in research funding works.
What does this mean for the Starting and Advanced Grants that the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation SERI and the Swiss National Science Foundation SNSF are announcing as transitional measures because researchers in Switzerland are currently excluded from the ERC grants?
It is imperative that the SERI and the SNSF continue to offer these grants, because then at least the researchers suffer no financial disadvantage. However, EU research funding and especially the ERC are absolute success stories because their panels are excellently skilled in recognising outstanding research. Anyone who passes an ERC evaluation is demonstrably among the top researchers. Switzerland can neither replace nor compensate for this seal of approval. That’s why full association with Horizon Europe and the ERC remains a key factor for cutting-edge research at ETH and in Switzerland.
If the SNSF does indeed fund more applied research in the future, would the ETH Research Commission then have to step into the breach and fund more basic research?
No, we can’t reallocate funds for that. Research by professors is financed through the basic endowment. Our Research Commission provides supplementary funding for first-rate, visionary projects with open-ended and innovative ideas. But it doesn’t make up for gaps in funding from other sources.
What’s next for the ETH Competence Centres?
Going forward, the Competence Centres will play an even bigger role. Many strategic research topics involve a large number of departments. The Competence Centres are the right place for interdepartmental research. Currently, however, we have too many Competence Centres, facilities outside the departments and other fixed-term initiatives such as ETH+ / Open ETH, the joint initiatives of the ETH Domain and the National Centres of Competence in Research (NCCR). Overall, we want to consolidate the interdisciplinary centres. We must first discuss how exactly to do that, and likewise what tasks they should carry out in teaching, research, knowledge transfer and communication.
In your view, what role do ETH technology platforms play?
The technology platforms are key in providing costly research infrastructure relevant to many research groups. However, we need to be more proactive than we have been in the past in reviewing which research technologies we really need. To this end, we’re revising our platform strategy and drawing up a new hub concept.
What would be the goal of a technology hub?
The goal is to make brand-new research technologies available to top researchers as quickly as possible. If they can apply a breakthrough technology just one year earlier, they’ll gain a huge advantage in global competition. The hub would be a kind of “starting platform” in which we test a technology to see if it actually has widespread potential before we invest heavily in it.
“When it comes to research ethics, ETH has three major goals: protection of people, protection of animals and protection of society.”Christian Wolfrum
You have referred to ethics as a prerequisite for excellence. In what sense is it?
“Scientific excellence” in the broad sense not only includes excellence in scientific research, but also excellence in connecting science to society, in teaching and mentoring scientists, in science management, and in science advice to policy makers, to name only a few.
What are the current challenges in research ethics?
When it comes to research ethics, ETH has three major goals: protection of people, protection of animals and protection of society. Regarding research with animals and with human subjects, we have the necessary structures and processes in place. As far as the societal debate over animal experiments goes, we need to explain in more detail how we conduct such experiments and for what purpose they are still necessary – namely in basic and translational research. The protection of society, on the other hand, is not yet much developed at ETH and in Switzerland. This involves, for example, research with dangerous viruses such as SARS or COVID, or safety and security in artificial intelligence. What protection is there should such research go wrong? That’s why a working group I set up is developing proposals for handling the safety and security aspects of research. These proposals are based on the recommendations of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) and the Leopoldina (the German National Academy of Sciences).
What are the next steps in research integrity?
We have revised our “Procedure to address allegations of research misconduct” and adapted it to the national code of the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences. The procedure now ensures that cases of scientific misconduct are investigated in a completely neutral setting. In addition, we have introduced training in good scientific practice (GSP) at the doctoral level to prevent scientific misconduct from occurring in the first place. The GSP Commission is also considering options for optimising scientific integrity guidance.
What does “open science” mean to you?
Open science is an important development. Researchers should be able to understand the data and results of other groups and also apply them to their own work. Now, however, much of the data is insufficiently annotated and cannot be integrated, making it all the harder for science to be truly “open”. Data preparation thus needs to happen according to the FAIR principle: research data should be findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable. Climate researchers are a role model here: they introduced standards for data structuring and can now use the same data for different models.
Regarding research, what are your feelings as you look to the future?
We’re facing some internal as well as external challenges, which we as ETH will not solve simply by sticking to our routine. We have to make do with scarcer resources to produce research that is just as excellent, while at the same time society expects us to provide answers to issues such as climate, health or security. As a researcher, however, I’ve seen so many times how hurdles that at first seem insurmountable can nevertheless be overcome. And I continue with this conviction as Vice President.
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