Research Europe, 17 July 2014 #

Reaching out#

Lars Walløe, outgoing president of the Academia Europaea, talks to Penny Sarchet about his efforts to close the EU’s widening innovation gap.

When it was founded in 1988, the idea of the Academia Europaea was to give a voice to the best researchers, scholars and scientists across Europe. Lars Walløe’s presidency, however, which began 20 years later, was very much a product of its time: dominated by the financial crisis and a continued struggle to widen participation to eastern academics.

“Of course we had some problems,” says Walløe, a Norwegian physiologist. “The financial crisis hit us, and academic institutions wanted to keep their money for their own use because they had so little of it. It was not easy to get support for the Academia Europaea.” The academy, which charges a voluntary annual subscription fee, was hit hard 3 years ago when budget cuts across Europe took their toll. Walløe weathered the storm by moving administration and personnel from a costly London office to Austria’s University of Graz and the academy’s regional hub in Wrocław, Poland. Further hubs have since been set up in Barcelona and Bergen, Norway.

Although the intention 26 years ago was to attract all of Europe’s excellent scientists to take part, the initiative has ended up with a large proportion of academics from Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK and, to a lesser extent, Germany. The creation of the three hubs is Walløe’s attempt to broaden its focus.

The Bergen hub was launched this spring and is intended to coordinate regional activity not only in the Nordics but also in the Baltic countries. Walløe says, with tongue in cheek, that this could even include Scotland if the nation chooses independence from the rest of the UK this September. The Barcelona hub’s raison d’être, meanwhile, is to stick up for southern Europe at a time when the European Commission’s Innovation Union Scoreboard shows that the innovation gap between the north and south is widening.

Walløe chose Barcelona as a hub location based on his experiences as a European Research Council panel member. In the first two rounds of ERC calls, he was impressed by how much effort Barcelona’s academic institutions put into supporting their researchers. “That made me think that a Barcelona hub would be ideal, because local people, not necessarily in formal positions, were interested in helping researchers.”

Widening participation is not the only issue weighing heavy on Walløe’s mind—the loss of specialisms at universities troubles him too. “All European universities are now more market-driven,” he says. “Each individual university has to make economic considerations, which means that many disciplines and subjects that don’t have many students are closed down.”

He is concerned that unpopular but valuable subjects are being lost in Europe, and would like to see universities collaborate in more esoteric fields, catering to students who, although less numerous, are also more mobile. If student numbers are lost because of market forces, the research in those fields will ultimately be lost too, says Walløe. He thinks the mind-set of European students needs to become more like that of their peers in the United States. In the US system, students are prepared to travel further for excellent education in their preferred subject area. If students were more willing to do this in Europe, it could help bolster research efforts in the south and the east, he says.

“If you look to the US, the best universities are on either the eastern or western coast, but every state has at least one topic or discipline that is excellent in its local university.” He believes European money should be provided for such specialisation, and that students should then travel across Europe to study their chosen subject wherever it is taught best. Walløe is adamant that poor countries in Europe cannot be expected to fund this development by themselves.

And European funders also have a role to play in improving excellence in Europe, Walløe says. Despite being an ERC panel member this year for the fifth time, he thinks the institution has taken attention away from the Commission’s quest to support struggling regions. To counteract the excellence focus of the ERC, other instruments, such as structural funding, are needed as well, he says. These should be used to build specialist expertise in poorer regions, to help prevent them from falling any further behind Europe’s innovation leaders.

Walløe’s successor was due to be elected at the academy’s meeting in Barcelona on 16 July, after Research Europe went to print. Asked if there is any advice he would give to the next president, Walløe laughs and quips: “Of course, it is to continue the work I’ve tried to do.”

Lars Walløe#

• 2008-2014 P r e s i d e n t , Academia Europaea
• 2008-present Emeritus professor of physiology, University of Oslo
• 2001-2004 Member of the European Commission’s European Research Advisory Board
• 1999-2003 C h a i r m a n, Standing Committee for Life, Earth and Environmental Sciences, European Science Foundation
• 1997-2004 P r e s i d e n t, Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters

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