Munich

A fresh start: Andrzej Legocki aims to foster competition at the Polish Academy of Sciences. Credit: S. BARNA/EAST NEWS

Winds of change are set to blow through the Polish Academy of Sciences, according to the plant biologist freshly elected to run the organization.

The academy — like many of its eastern European counterparts — oversees a large but somewhat dilapidated national network of research institutes in a range of disciplines. And although Poland has the largest and one of the strongest economies in the region, critics say that parts of the academy have not changed much since communist rule ended in 1989.

But this month Andrzej Legocki, a plant biologist and former director of the academy's Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry in Poznań, takes over as president. He says that he will commission an external quality review of all 80 of the institutes — and predicts that around ten of them could close once the review is completed later this year.

Legocki promises to tackle the academy's main problems head-on, including low output, ageing research staff and lack of contact with university research.

“I am determined to drastically change the situation,” he says. “First we shall recognize what is worth maintaining, then we will merge groups and institutes, and put them under new, younger leadership.” At 63, Legocki is himself the youngest president in the academy's 50-year history.

Poland is the largest of ten countries in central and eastern Europe that will join the European Union next year, but it has been slower than some others, notably Hungary and the Czech Republic, to reform its scientific infrastructure (see Nature 421, 471–472; 200310.1038/421471a).

Jerzy Langer, a solid-state physicist at the academy's Institute of Physics in Warsaw and vice-president of Euroscience, a grassroots organization of European scientists, says that Polish science is in need of a drastic overhaul. “Poland is simply too poor to subsidize an oversized, mediocre science base,” he says.

The academy employs about 4,000 scientists, mostly in permanent positions. Critics say that their lifelong job security gives them little incentive to be competitive. And Legocki concedes that the academy lags behind in many fields.

To boost the position of young scientists in the academy, Legocki pledges that all institutes that do not already have a graduate student programme will establish one, along with fixed-term postdoctoral positions for young researchers. “Young scientists at our institutes will be under my personal patronage,” he promises.

“Legocki is the right man at the right time,” says Jacek Kuźnicki, a neuroscientist and director of the International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology in Warsaw. “But for any reform to be succesful it is vital the older generation accepts that competition is an essential part of the game.”

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