ReseaRch Quality assuRance foR the futuRe a ... - Lund University

Part 2 – Conclusions of the review
allocates funding directly to those who will use it, but it has several
dis advantages.
120. It diminishes the University’s capacity to attract the best talents,
as described in sections F1 and F2d. In addition, it means that
innovative research developments in the University are largely
dependent on the pattern of external grant success. Does this matter?
We believe that it does. One of the great advantages of universities,
which embrace a unique range of knowledge compared with any
other institutions, is that they are able to re-combine disciplinary
capacities in novel ways to address cross-disciplinary imperatives,
new unexpected areas of research (see section G2) and issues for
which universities should take responsibility, for example in the field
of international development (e.g. paragraph 82). But they need the
resource and the flexibility to back their own hunches about such
innovations, rather than depending on the pattern of individual
research grants or having to persuade national funding bodies of the
opportunity. In Sweden, the latter is particularly difficult because
of the construction of salaries. Some of the most important and
creative departures in modern research have arisen by universities
exercising their own creativity to generate new research enterprises.
Lund’s creativity in this regard, in difficult financial circumstances,
is exemplified by its Flight Tunnel Facility, which has set a new
international agenda along with new standards for understanding
the dynamics and control of flight, particularly in birds; by CIRCLE
– the Centre for Innovation, Research and Competence in the Learning
Economy focusing on the interrelations between knowledge
creation, innovation, and economic growth which has successfully
competed for large national grants including a Linneus grant; and by
CREATE HEALTH – Strategic Centre for Clinical Cancer Research,
which integrates researchers from Lund University Hospital,
the Faculties of Medical and Natural Sciences and Lund Institute of
Technology in a superbly equipped and integrated ”omics” platform,
concentrated in a single area.
121. The importance of grant funding for the salaries of young researchers
can also encourage young researchers into premature independence
and to create an excessive number of small research groups.
Such groups are vulnerable and rarely create critical mass. This is
particularly noticeable for example in Laboratory Medicine.
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