munich

An experimental project to retrain unemployed scientists from the former East Germany appears so successful that European Commission officials are now “looking favourably” at backing similar schemes elsewhere in Europe.

The scheme, using European Union (EU) funds, was introduced last year by the Max Delbrück Centre for Molecular Medicine (MDC) in Berlin, where 60 scientists are employed using money from the European Social Fund (ESF), part of the EU's subsidies for poor regions (see Nature 388, 109; 1997 ).

After only one year of the three-year retraining scheme, more than one in ten have found permanent positions or won independent grant money. A further DM10 million (US$6 million) was approved earlier this year to retrain 46 researchers at Berlin's Adlershof Science Park. Other institutes in Berlin, Brandenburg and Sachsen-Anhalt have also applied for ESF money.

EU representatives told a meeting in Berlin that the encouraging results mean the scheme may be expanded to other regions after 2000. Cuts in public spending mean that many countries, such as Spain and Portugal, face major difficulties in providing full-time research posts for researchers who have completed their postdoctoral training.

ESF training programmes have traditionally been restricted to unqualified workers. But Karl Freese, of the Association of Biomedical Research, a German lobby group representing 15 non-university biomedical research institutes, is one of many campaigning for qualified workers to be included.

Freese argues that scientists educated in the former East Germany, for example, did not have the chance to learn modern scientific techniques. He is worried that several thousand face dismissal when their non-renewable short-term contracts expire in the autumn. “Unemployment among scientists is a waste of human creativity,” says Freese.

The commission appears to have been won round. But Hans Keirat, an EU official who oversees allocation of social funds for east Germany, warns that before other countries can take advantage of it, the commission “wants to be convinced” that the Berlin programmes have really reduced long-term unemployment. Marion Bimmler, of the MDC's personnel department, accepts that the centre needs more time to find out if this goal can be achieved. “But we are very optimistic about it,” she says, denying that the scheme is merely a “welfare act”.

Participants continue to work in established research groups while retraining in new techniques. According to Bimmler, cooperation between the ‘trainees’ and staff researchers has been excellent. “ESF-funded scientists have contributed to many publications and patents and have even co-founded new companies,” she says.

Karla Köpke, for example, a 47-year-old mathematician, worked for the Academy of Sciences before reunification and then at the Humboldt University in Berlin, until her funding ran out in 1996. Last year she joined a research group at the MDC analysing genes underlying drug addiction. She developed a mathematical method for analysing the polymorphic profiles of candidate genes, which was not possible by conventional methods. “It was because of Köpke's work that we managed to develop a classification of various genetic profiles,” says Margarete Hoehe, head of the research group. Köpke's method is to be patented.

If the Berlin results continue to be positive, the chances of creating a general scheme for retraining unemployed scientists are high. Changes in the distribution of EU subsidies to poor regions, which absorb a third of the EU's total budget, are being negotiated. After 2000 they are likely to be used to address general issues such as unemployment throughout the EU.

Biochemist Christof Tannert, a socialist member of the European Parliament from east Germany, says: “Social funds alone cannot solve unemployment among scientists. But the fact that their doors are now open to scientists will help.”