Paris

New mission: former astronaut Claudie Haigneré is now at the helm of France's research ministry.

Claudie Haigneré, who became minister for research in France's new centre-right government in June, was the nation's first female astronaut and is the only woman qualified to pilot the International Space Station's Soyuz lifeboat back to Earth.

Now she's on an emergency mission of a different sort. She is aiming to rescue the country's research system from a set of problems that many observers say are preventing France from keeping its best young talent or from punching its weight internationally.

Haigneré's aim is to rebuild relations between her ministry and the research community, and then bring about change with the backing of scientists. “I'm aware of the imperfections of the system, but we can't change it with a magic wand,” she says. She has pledged not to micromanage the various agencies supervised by the ministry, but rather to render them accountable by evaluating their performance in reaching set goals.

Haigneré is a calm, unassuming character. But her professional track record suggests that this political debutante may just have the nerve and tenacity to get the job done.

She topped her class at the University of Dijon medical school, and practised in rheumatology and sports injuries before gaining a PhD in neuroscience and a research position at a lab run by the CNRS, France's national research agency, in Paris. In 1985, Haigneré was chosen from 1,000 applicants to become an astronaut. While training, she led medical research at the French space agency.

Haigneré has pledged that her approach will be forged by the “patience, determination, continuity of effort, and teamwork” that she learned from preparation for space missions. She is seen as a reformer — but one in a very different mould from the geophysicist Claude Allègre, who attempted a radical overhaul of French research, without the backing of researchers, during his tenure as minister from 1997 to 2000 (see Nature 404, 421; 2000).

One of Haigneré's goals will be greater autonomy for young researchers. Almost 75% of full-time researchers in France work in the laboratory where they obtained their PhD. Because most funds are spread thinly across laboratories, rather than going to individual investigators as competitive grants, young researchers often find themselves subservient to powerful senior scientists. As a result, critics say, many of France's best young talents disappear abroad and do not return.

Haigneré says she would like to break this pattern and offer the best young scientists higher salaries, larger grants and better working conditions. She favours the creation, for the first time, of a full-blown postdoctoral system in France, but does not plan to challenge the civil-servant status and good job security currently enjoyed by public researchers.

The time may be ripe for such a pragmatic approach to reform, says Daniel Louvard, director of the Curie Institute in Paris. What's needed, he says, is not wholesale change, but rather a set of discrete measures that will “encourage young scientists to take risks and give them good reasons to work in France”.

But Haigneré's ambition may be hampered by the likelihood that next year's science budget will be unchanged or even reduced, potentially jeopardizing an agreement between scientists and the previous government to increase the number of research positions.

Researchers are already complaining that President Jacques Chirac has reneged on a promise, made before his re-election in May, to increase total spending on research and development from 2.15% of France's economy to 3% by 2010. Haigneré says most of this increase will come from industrial spending, but admits it will be difficult to meet the target unless the public research budget also grows.