Institutions clamour for a share of recovery plan funding

Leggi in italiano

Italian universities and research organizations are rushing to complete applications for funding to create five large collaborative research consortia, each receiving up to €400 million from Italy's National Recovery and Resilience Plan. The scheme marks the beginning of an unprecedented wave of investment in research and technology transfer tied to the European Union’s post-pandemic relief fund, but taking part is proving to be a stress test for the Italian research system.

The call for applications was published in December and will close on 15 February. It aims to distribute €1.6 billion to five national centres on ‘key enabling’ technologies, namely advanced simulation and big data, gene therapies and RNA-based drugs, biodiversity, sustainable mobility, and technologies for agriculture. One institution (the ‘hub’), will be in charge of general management, and between 5 and 15 centers across the country (the ‘spokes’) will perform research activities, where necessary involving further groups and institutions as affiliates. Each centre will need to employ at least 250 research staff, with at least 40% female. Additionally, centres will have to use at least 40% of their budget for activities in southern regions, to bring greater equity in the country.

The Minister for Universities and Research, Maria Cristina Messa, tells Nature Italy she expected only one proposal for each centre. “From what we have heard so far, I would be surprised if there were more. Convergence on a single proposal per centre was encouraged by the fact that we set a very high bar”.

Not many institutes have enough critical mass and experience to lead the centres. The proposals in preparation are being led by the National Institute for Nuclear Physics INFN in Bologna (advanced simulation and big data), the National Research Council in Palermo (biodiversity), Politecnico di Milano (sustainable mobility), the University of Padua (gene therapies and RNA-based drugs), and the University of Naples Federico II (agritech). Simply defining the composition of the consortia was a challenge. “Our initial project included 51 universities, which we had to bring down to 25 through a very hard selection based on scientific quality, in order to comply with the requirements,” says Matteo Lorito, rector of the university of Naples Federico II.

The national centres will have to establish a new legal entity. For example, Lorito says that the agritech centre in Naples would probably be a foundation governed by private law. The membership of the legal entity is limited to 49 entities, between spokes and affiliates: up to 25 public universities or research institutions supervised by the Ministry of Universities and Research, and up to 24 research entities outside the ministry's umbrella or private companies. Institutions and teams not included in the main bid will then have a chance to apply for funding distributed by each centre through ‘cascade calls’, using from 10% to 50% of the overall budget.

All proposals will undergo a two-step evaluation procedure, which is expected to be completed before the end of June. Even if they all have very good chances of being funded, the exact amount allocated to each centre will depend on the respective evaluations.

This is only one part of the funding schemes in the PNRR. Two more calls were also launched at the end of December, with deadlines in the second half of February. They aim to build at least 30 sites for research and innovation (shared experimental and testing facilities in all fields, funded with €1.58 billion), and 12 regional ecosystems for innovation (smaller regional consortia collaborating on technologies that are close to market applications, funded with €1.3 billion). Another round, expected in late March, will allocate €1.61 billion to 10 extended partnerships on basic and interdisciplinary research, involving academia and industry.

Participating in this bonanza is putting a strain on all universities, big and small, where management staffers have been engaged for weeks with understanding and applying. Experts at the ministry – that is rapidly increasing its staff assigned to these calls – were continually updating the Q&A on its website.

Some universities struggled to involve their academic communities in the proposals, while others reacted more promptly. The University of Florence, for instance, created a task force involving the heads of all its 21 departments. “Some of our colleagues were so impatient to be involved that they contacted us the day after the publication of the call asking for guidelines, while we were still figuring out the details ourselves,” says Debora Berti, vice-rector for research in Florence.

“The total amount of funding is unprecedented for the Italian research community,” says Luigi Nicolais, a professor of engineering at Naples University Federico II, and a former president of the National Research Council. “This is very positive, but it raises concerns on the capacity of the research system to put the funds to good use and to leave a lasting legacy.” Nicolais is especially concerned by the tight timeframe, as all European funds have to be used by 2026.

“Even before the pandemic, Italy was losing ground both economically and scientifically, and we must now profit from this opportunity,” says Fabio Zwirner, vice-rector in charge of research at University of Padua and former vice-president of the European Research Council. “These funds should be the sign of a lasting change”.

Messa points out that the ordinary fund for Italian universities will also gradually increase, from €8.4 billion currently, to €9.2 billion in 2026. Together with an increased budget for the scheme for two-year projects of relevant national interest (PRIN), and with a newly-launched programme for individual grants, this should guarantee the long-term sustainability of the five national centres and of other initiatives to be launched, she says. “I expect all these investments to have a lasting effect on scientific productivity, on the creation of spin-offs and on the number of university professors, which I expect will increase from the current 55,000 to 70,000 in 10 years” says Messa.