sydney

Sara: will encounter political tensions in a climate of cuts. Credit: ARC

Vicki Sara, newly appointed as chair of the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the first woman in the post, says her first challenge is to ensure Australia's international competitiveness in research at a time of “extreme pressure on funding”.

The council provides competitive, peer-reviewed grants for research in universities. Appointed for three years full-time, Sara succeeds Max Brennan, a physicist, who retired in August.

Brennan's departure had been signalled 12 months earlier, and the long delay by the Education Minister, Amanda Vanstone, in announcing a successor was publicly attacked by the country's four learned academies and the Australian vice-chancellors' committee, which were concerned that it presaged major changes to the ARC.

Sara's appointment has now been widely welcomed by these bodies. But the delay will cause a four-month hiatus, as she cannot leave her current job as dean of science at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) until the beginning of next year.

Sara, who is 51, gained a high reputation for her research in the endocrinology of fetal brain development during her 17 years at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. After returning to Australia in 1993, she became the first director of the Cooperative Research Centre for Diagnostic Technologies, based at QUT.

On moving to Canberra, she will enter a tense political atmosphere characterized by continuing conflict between Vanstone and university researchers over the effects of cuts. Anxiety about the government's responses to recent reviews was heightened by Vanstone's statement, when announcing Sara's appointment, that the ARCwill soon be making “critical funding and programme decisions”. These decisions may have to be made before Sara can develop the ARC's first strategic plan, which she says will take six months.

Next May, the Coalition government delivers its third and last annual budget before the next federal election. The 1997 budget foreshadowed substantial cuts to research funding — ARC ‘s budget will drop from A$429 million (US$309 million) in 1997-98 to A$381 million in 2000-01 (see Nature 387, 222 222 ) & (Nature 387, 328 328 ).

Sara acknowledges that this situation poses a major challenge. “We must never give up the aim of improving our funding,” she says, expressing particular concern at the effect on careers and international competitiveness of the fact that the ARC must “provide for an infrastructure on 27 cents in every dollar of research funding, whereas our aim should be 40 cents”.

She believes the success rate in grant applications (21 per cent) is “too low”, citing a “minimum rate of around 30 per cent in Europe”.

Encouraging more cooperation between institutions and more sharing of major international facilities, such as Australian astronomers’ attempt to join the Gemini telescopes project (see above), which she strongly supports, are Sara's first suggestions for alleviating the effects of cuts.

She is the first chair of the ARC to come to the post declaring a need “to boost the profile of research in the public and politics” through the ARC. She is an active promoter of the public understanding of science, having been involved in the ‘QUT Science Train’, an educational show for young people that is at present touring Queensland.