The government’s announcement of a national science strategy is good for Australia, particularly for promoting engagement between science and industry.
Funding, steady as she goes.
notes Alessandro Storniolo/Shutterstock.com
Why not let scientists vote for who they think should get grant funding for their research?
Queensland’s Parliament building. The state had a strong history of supporting research and innovation under the Smart State banner.
Flickr/Neal Jennings
The Future Fellowships scheme is a great success. Scrapping it would hurt Australia’s future as a smart nation.
Research institutes are important economic contributors to their host cities. The University of Queensland is just across the river from the city of Brisbane.
Photo credit: The University of Queensland.
Scrapping the ARC Future Fellowships scheme would have a significant impact on the Australian research community, with knock-on effects for innovation, the economy, and society at large.
Chief scientist of Australia Professor Ian Chubb during his address to the National Press Club in Canberra.
AAP Image/Lukas Coch
Science matters and is important for Australia’s future but there is evidence mounting that we are falling behind the rest of the world.
Research infrastructure, such as the H-1NF at the Australian Plasma Fusion Research Facility, enables our world leading science.
Australian Plasma Fusion Research Facility
Australia needs to take a longer term view of research infrastructure funding in order to prevent it from becoming politicised.
New innovations and technologies, such as the Nanopatch developed by Australian biotech Vaxxas, are instrumental to Australia’s future prosperity, and many benefit from NCRIS facilities, which are now under threat from government cuts.
AIBN
The government believes innovation will be crucial to our future productivity, yet it is threatening cuts to research infrastructure that is instrumental to promoting innovation and new technologies.
TERN operates a number of flux towers that measure energy, water and carbon dioxide fluxes and their drivers in the vast expanse of northern Australia.
The NCRIS-funded Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) benefits pastoralists, business, tourism and Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory. Cutting it will hurt them all.
Facilities like the Australian Synchrotron are relied upon by scientists across the country, and could shut down if research infrastructure funding is withheld by the government.
Sandra Morrow
Cutting vital research infrastructure funding because the higher education reforms are stuck in the Senate could end up costing the country dearly.
Education minister Christopher Pyne has maintained that the higher education reforms must be passed in order for science infrastructure funding to be released.
AAP/Lukas Coch
Leading scientists warn that research facilities may close and jobs will be lost if the government doesn’t free up promised science funding.
The Murchison Widefiled Array might not look like traditional infrastructure, but it’s just as essential to scientific research.
Natasha Hurley-Walker/Wikimedia
As scientific researchers, we are often surprised by some of the assumptions made about us by those outside our profession. So we put together a list of common myths we and our colleagues have heard anecdotally…
Who else will do the long-term research if universities don’t do it?
Shutterstock/bogdanhoda
Increasing university-industry collaboration and boosting the commercial return from research is currently under review by the Australian government. The Minister for Industry (and recently for Science…
Me on one of my field trips to the Nullarbor working on desert reptiles.
My decision to turn down a lucrative Discovery Early Career Award (DECRA) worth A$385,000 was outlined in an ABC report broadcast last week. The DECRA is a prestigious grant given by the Australian Research…
Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane, seen here with the Anglo Australian Telescope at Sidings Springs, is known to have a deep interest in science. So what should expect now the word science is added to his ministerial title?
AAP/Alan Porritt
“What’s in a name?” was essentially the Australian government’s response when concerns were first expressed about dropping “Science” from the ministerial portfolio titles back in 2013. That same response…
After several delays, the UK government’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills finally published its first strategy for UK science and innovation titled Our Plan for Growth. Strangely for such…
For all the exciting stories and developments that basic science research produces, there is one question that the public never tires of asking: “What are the possible applications of that discovery…
The future of the Parkes radio telescope in doubt in a climate of cutbacks.
Flickr/Steve Dorman
It’s been a year of incredible feats in science and technology but also a year of uncertainty too as the Australian government’s budget proposed changes to the funding for universities and cut funding…