Maria Tabernero: industry is well equipped and may even offer postdocs a better salary than academia.
Working for Unilever was a positive experience for Maria Tabernero. The 25-year-old Spanish biologist spent two years in the laboratory of the chemical and food company in Vlaardingen, the Netherlands, courtesy of the Marie Curie Actions fellowship programme. Marie Curie fellowships are aimed at improving training and mobility for young scientists in Europe — across national borders, but also from academia to industry.
Like many other Marie Curie investigators, Tabernero would now like to continue her career in her home country, preferably at a university. But it remains unclear how these fellowships will help to increase interactions between industry and academia, and industry participation in training young scientists outside their home countries.
Some feel that the inherent premise of fellowships in industry is problematic, as the commercial aspects may run counter to the needs of both sides. Young researchers associate large industrial labs, where most of the non-academic Marie Curie fellowships are offered, with second-class science. And the heads of smaller companies remain closed to the idea of hosting a fellow from another country, out of fear that a short-term fellow could learn and take home more than would be good for the company.
About 85% of the 5,000 young postdocs who were granted an individual Marie Curie fellowship by the European Commission (EC) during the expiring Fifth Framework Programme for research preferred an academic training site. And industrial labs accounted for only 12% of 'host fellowships', which are awarded directly by 500 or so pre-selected host institutions throughout Europe.
Large companies, such as Unilever and Aventis, are keen to promote training opportunities in their labs. Both had stands, for example, at a major European research meeting last October in Brussels. The conference marked the beginning of the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6), from 2002 to 2006, under which the Marie Curie fellowships will be continued.
One goal of FP6 is to improve mobility in the European Research Area. So the overall budget for training and mobility of researchers has increased by 50% to E1.58 billion (US$1.64 billion).
But will industry play a bigger role this time? Some researchers say that it certainly has something to offer. "You can expect to work in well-equipped labs, you may get additional marketing and language training, and if you are lucky you will get paid a higher salary than foreseen by the European Commission," says Tabernero.
Peter Stadler fears that commercial sensitivity may hinder postdoctoral studies in industry.
Nonetheless, industry is unlikely to increase its participation in the Marie Curie programme significantly. In particular, some of the best industrial labs remain unwilling to take part in a scheme that may offer them more risk than benefit.
For example, Peter Stadler, chief executive of one of Germany's most promising biotech start-ups, Artemis in Cologne, doubts that small, highly innovative companies would be prepared to train young guest researchers for fear that core company know-how would wander all over the world.
CATCH-22
Indeed, few small biotech companies have participated in the Marie Curie programme — or even become aware of its existence. They typically say that they lack the resources needed to train and look after fellows, but they are also concerned about confidentiality issues.
"Confidentiality is most important," says Stadler. "We live from selling our intellectual property — who would guarantee that nothing leaks away?"
On the other hand, larger companies, with a high proportion of routine research that is of little relevance in terms of competition, are more likely to value the skills of Marie Curie fellows. Some, indeed, are looking desperately for candidates.
"We've had some excellent fellows in the past 10 years," says Loreto Sheils, a research manager at Unilever's laboratories in Bedford, UK. "But finding good candidates for the industry host fellowships is difficult. One reason may be the reluctance of young scientists to undertake PhD or postdoctoral studies in an industrial environment."
Aventis, which is also offering fellowships, has had similar experiences. Two years ago, for example, the pharmaceutical giant advertised 40 postdoctoral positions in France, 10 of which are still vacant. "We have opportunities mainly for chemists, but these people are much sought after," explains Jutta Reinhard-Rupp, who is responsible for scientific affairs at Aventis in Frankfurt, Germany. Filling vacant Marie Curie positions is a particular challenge, she says, because the best potential candidates are put off by the lengthy application procedures when they could probably find better-paid permanent positions elsewhere, without the bureaucracy.
It is particularly difficult for interested small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in highly specialized but not very fashionable fields to find fellows. "The few scientists who are looking for industrial training sites are not sufficiently aware about opportunities in SMEs," says Christian Abeln, a Marie Curie supervisor at CAS Software in Karlsruhe, Germany, an SME that develops business software.
CALLING OUT
One attempt to bring interested researchers and SMEs together is the 'Fellow for Industry' initiative, co-funded by the EC and run by the Austrian Bureau for International Research and Technology Cooperation in Vienna. The bureau helps SMEs and researchers with a specific project idea to find appropriate partners in 13 countries, including Israel, Iceland and six future European Union member states in central and eastern Europe.
But despite such initiatives, most Marie Curie fellows prefer academic host institutes as training sites. "It is the freedom to research that counts more than everything else for me," says Joaquin Navarro, a Spanish Marie Curie fellow currently at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried, Germany. "I would not really want to work in industry."
Jonathan Dando believes that postdocs dismiss jobs in industry too readily.
Most young scientists are sympathetic. "It is part of the European mentality to think that beauty and purity can solely be found in academic research," says Jonathan Dando, a member of the advisory board and industry committee of the Marie Curie Fellowship Association (MCFA), an independent group of former fellows who voluntarily provide moral support and practical assistance to newcomers.
"There is a widespread feeling among many young researchers that going to industry would isolate them from the research community, and hence would virtually be scientific suicide," says Dando, a molecular biologist at the Institute Gustave Roussy in Villejuif, France. These fears are not necessarily justified, he believes. "In the life sciences it is not true that industry research cuts you off from the academic community," he says. "Large pharmaceutical companies have a variety of scientific collaborations with small biotech businesses and university groups, so postdocs still have many opportunities to publish."
The MCFA is promoting industry participation in the Marie Curie programme. Last October, for example, it offered all host institutions free space on its website for advertising vacant Marie Curie training opportunities. But the response from industry was poor — only 13 companies made use of the offer. "It may have to do with the difficult economic situation," Dando says. "Many companies are battening down the hatches."
Why, then, should young scientists apply for a Marie Curie fellowship in industry? One advantage, says Sheils, is that it may help them to find a permanent job if, at some point, they are fed up with the job-hopping typical in academic careers.
But there is no guarantee that an industry fellowship will pave the way to permanent employment. Tired of her futile attempts to find a university position, Tabernero has begun to apply to industrial research departments in Spain. So far, the mention of Marie Curie in her CV has not helped her to find a new job.
Marie Curie Fellowship Association 
http://www.mariecurie.org
Marie Curie Actions http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/fp6/mariecurie-actions/home_en.html