Published online 19 August 2004
Interview
Richard Sykes Rector
Richard Sykes Rector
Imperial College, London
Since joining Imperial College as rector in January 2001, former GlaxoSmithKline chairman Richard Sykes has been calling for better stipends for graduate students and postdocs, and more money in general for UK science. During the recent Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) meeting in San Francisco, he took a few minutes with Naturejobs editor Paul Smaglik to discuss scientific career paths, the shifting demographics of scientific employment and how academia can do a better job of preparing scientists to work with industry - whatever sector they stay in. This conversation has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Question 1
What do you think are the biggest concerns for young graduate students and postdocs, and how are you addressing them?
Answer:
"First of all, we've got to be encouraging more young people into science and technology. That's the number one priority. And I think that starts way back in the early years where we get people involved in the mathematical and physical disciplines so that then they can go on and take a real interest in the world around them. And that means they've got to learn some physics, they've got to do some mathematics, they've got to do some chemistry. They shouldn't be frightened of those things. These are exciting subjects. But it's like everything else—you've got to work at it. You can't just play a violin; it takes a long time to learn. And so I think we need to get the environment right where we are encouraging more and more of our young people to go into these subjects so they can participate in things like BIO. And then we've got the universities in which they can develop their education further. But if they never come to us, we can't do anything about it. Then what we need is we've got to make our universities exciting places, so that they can come in and learn and practise all this stuff. We've got to get these people up and running very quickly. They can't just learn a subject. They've got to learn a whole panoply of things and this is what we're trying to do—bring 'interdisciplinary' into the educational mix."
Question 2
In his 'roadmap' for US biomedical research, National Institutes of Health director Elias Zerhouni mentions the need to start training for interdisciplinary careers at the undergraduate level. And I was struck by how much he's now talking about systems biology. A few years ago people were dissing my man Lee Hood [co-founder and president of the Institute of Systems Biology in Seattle, Washington], and now everyone's down with him - in the parlance of our time. Is systems biology something you're trying to do at Imperial as well?
Answer:
"It's the same old game isn't it? Systems biology is engineering and biology and medicine. This has been going on a hell of a long time at Imperial. But of course the whole concept of bringing medicine and science and technology together is becoming more and more important. So, yes, it's always been there. But now we're doing it big-time. We're building an institute for biomedical engineering so that we can bring these people to work physically side by side. It's the sort of thing Leroy Hood is trying to do and Stanford's trying to do in its Bio-X initiative: get people from different disciplines working alongside each other and then exciting things happen. These are the excitements we want to bring to young people. Science is fascinating. Science has got tremendous things to offer. If we can put that across to them in the right sort of way—if we think about all the problems we have in the world today, the big issues are likely to be solved by science and technology: they ain't going to be solved by anything else—they can play a role in that. Young people don't go into engineering. Why? Because they worry that engineering is going to put them in some sort of cage. And it's not—engineering is so broad and so interdisciplinary."
Question 3
Devil's advocate question. A lot of PhDs have a hard time getting faculty-level jobs. So if you're encouraging even more people to go into science, there'll be even fewer jobs. Wouldn't it be better for the existing young scientists if fewer people go into science so that the ones who do go in, get tenure-track positions?>
Answer:
"What we want to do is change the whole process of career structure. We've got to make it clear to young people that there is a career structure. There's a career structure in academia, there's a career structure in industry—there's a career structure for these subjects. Being an academic is critically important to the nation, it's critically important to the competitive edge, because the knowledge base now is leading the world economy. It has to. Where do you think all this stuff [at BIO] comes from? All this stuff is coming out of the knowledge base. The knowledge base is the university. So we want our best and brightest people working in these environments. And we can't expect them to work there for nothing any more. We've got to pay them."
Question 4
Are those career structures there and just not being communicated?
Answer:
"No. I think we've still got a problem. We still don't pay these people adequately because we think that because they work in universities they'll do with less. It's not true. We've got to make sure that when we do something—whether we teach, whether we do research—we do it at economic costs. That's starting to happen now in the United Kingdom. But if we don't charge full economic cost, how can we pay people proper salaries? I think that's going to start happening now. We've got to charge for what we do and pay the people properly who do it and then make sure they have the right environment in which to offer it. And then I think people will start going back into academia."
Question 5
Last time we spoke about this issue, you offered a Devil's advocate answer—why bother going into academia when you can go into the City and become an investment banker and make a tonne of money?
Answer:
"Yeah, but eventually you're going to swamp that system, aren't you? That's the point. I don't have a problem with analytically trained minds going into the City because I think that's good. But there's only so many places and a lot of people aren't attracted by that sort of activity anyway."
Question 6
Can you give me a picture of what you think is going to happen with science employment in the United Kingdom, demographically? I've heard from various people that there will be a big wave of retirements in five to seven years, but I'm always a little bit sceptical, because what if these people retire and then universities just shift around and downsize departments? Will there be a net increase in opportunity for young scientists? Theoretically someone in the first year of graduate school should do really well by the time they get out of their first postdoc if there is a mass wave of retirements.
Answer:
"But I don't think retirement has got anything to do with it. We don't have a system where we wait for somebody to retire to promote. We promote people on merit, not on whether there's a position or not. It's got nothing to do with positions. In fact, a university is completely different from business, where you may have to wait to promote somebody to take somebody's job. In the university, you promote people on merit, irrespective of whether there's a position. So that's not true of what's going on at Imperial and I can't believe its true of most universities. It's got nothing to do with stepping into a dead man's shoes."
Question 7
Do you think there's enough funding from the government now to encourage young people to get into science?
Answer:
"No. I think it's improving, I think it's a hell of a lot better than it was, but it's still not good enough, because as I said to you earlier, we've got to start paying the full economic costs. We don't do that for research. We certainly don't do that for teaching, which means universities are still strapped for cash and therefore they pay people poorly."
Question 8
Let's say you have a net gain of 10% in funding a year. Is it better to fund more postdocs at a lower salary, or fewer postdocs at a higher salary?
Answer:
"It's quality, not quantity; it's always been quality. An excellent university is only excellent because of its people. So you need to attract the best and you need to keep them. And you need to develop them. And that takes money. And that would be true of students, undergraduates, postgraduates, lecturers, professors."
Question 9
As you're well aware, the United States has had a rather sharp decline in the number of people from, say, India and China coming in because of tighter visa restrictions. Are you beginning to see the benefits of that?
Answer:
"We are beginning to see an upturn dramatically in the past year. We've seen an enormous change. If you just look at Chinese students—mainland Chinese—three years ago we had 60 on the campus, today we have 600. That's the change. It's now the biggest national group outside the United Kingdom on campus. We've always had a lot of students from Singapore, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong. But the increase in mainland Chinese students alone is quite remarkable. We could fill the whole Imperial College with these students if we wanted to. There's been a very big change in people applying to come to Imperial in the past couple of years. And a lot of that has got to do with what's happening in the United States. The United States didn't have a better education system than the United Kingdom. It just pulled the best students from the rest of the world. Now that's not happening any more."
Question 10
What sort of long-term effects will this have on the education system and the economy?
Answer:
"I think it will have an effect. It's got to because that's what's driven the United States. So what we've got to do is make sure that we accommodate them in the right way. In the United States, when foreign nationals came there was funding for them. Most of the good American universities have big endowments. So many of these kids come from financially disadvantaged backgrounds, but they're bloody smart, so we've got to make sure, somehow, that the government helps us attract these people to come and study in the United Kingdom—and hopefully stay. There are some mechanisms afoot now, through our estate, to provide these scholarships and they're happening."
Question 11
There's a trend now toward what I call "super-postdocs"—giving promising young scientists bigger stipends and more freedom to attract top talent. Is this what you mean?
Answer:
"If we had a European Research Council that's exactly what it should do. Forget about all that other stuff about building networks of excellence—just put a big chunk of money in there to attract the best and brightest to come and work in Europe. It would change the whole European Union. Just put a few billion euros into the European Research Council and then say: "This is for the best students." And then you pay them twice what most students get, so that they are really recognized as being the best. It would transform the whole system."
Question 12
What else are you thinking about these days?
Answer:
"I think the important thing now, in a place like Imperial, is to go after the best students and make sure we educate them in a way that makes them much more fit to come out into the world. So we bring the business school much more into the areas of science. We're trying to get engineering students doing business, we're trying to get clinicians doing business, we're trying to get physicists and mathematicians. And then what we want to do is do a Master's in business and engineering —not an MBA, but an MBE—and an MBS, maybe, a Master's in Business of Science, so that we're training people to manage science, we're training people to manage technology. The trouble with MBAs is they can go anywhere. If you had a master's in business of engineering or science or medicine, you know where you're going; you stay in technology."
Question 13
Is that an example of defining a career track that you mentioned earlier?
Answer:
"Absolutely. We want to use our strength—which is science, technology and medicine—we want to use that in a business sense as well, and integrate the whole thing."
Question 14
Is that programme up and running?
Answer:
"It's now being just developed. We do teach the undergraduates in various scientific disciplines about business as an entrepreneurial activity."
Question 15
What can be done to make mentoring more important? What can you do as rector to improve mentoring at your university?
Answer:
"Well, the research councils have now put a lot of money into this. So I've got to make sure that all our staff are absolutely committed to this. They are being paid for it. We've got two postgraduate schools now—one for physical sciences and engineering, one for life sciences and medicine—so they take care of all the graduates. And they make sure that they train and develop properly and get on their courses and chase the departments if that doesn't happen. We're absolutely committed to that now, whereas in the past I think we didn't bother."
Question 16
Last question. When I last spoke with Zerhouni, he came up with a pretty good concept of developing a set of mutual expectations for the mentor and the person being mentored, before you signed on the dotted line for a postdoc. If you were a potential postdoc, what would your demands be? What terms would you negotiate?
Answer:
"It's a good question, isn't it? Obviously, the number one priority would be access to the right facilities. I'd want to make sure I had access to the right facilities to do my work, I'd want freedom in which to operate, but I'd also want access to this mentor. I'd want a clear path through in front of me, so that if I were to stay in the university, what is my career path if I were going outside—so that there was something mapped out, that I am doing this work for a period of time. There is an endpoint to it, rather than drifting on. You hear of some postdocs who've been there for 20 years—it's a disgrace. How much teaching do you do? How much supervising are you going to do? How much training are you going to get? And you should set the agenda for that. And then people will feel much more comfortable, that they're not being used as cheap labour."
