Italian research minister Ortensio Zecchino has sown discontent among biologists by excluding them from a key academic committee that he appointed just before resigning from the government last week.

Zecchino's parting gift to life sciences was to snub them. Credit: AP

Zecchino did not include any life scientists in the new eight-strong 'warrant' committee, which will distribute annual grant money of around L250 billion (US $120 million) to university researchers.

The committee includes two lawyers, a historian and an economist, as well as a chemist, an engineer, a mathematician and a paediatrician. Biologists feel Zecchino has abused his privilege of making the appointments directly, a privilege conferred only recently on the research minister.

In a letter to the newspaper La Repubblica, 14 Italian heads of scientific societies in the life sciences complained that their discipline was not represented on the committee, although biology accounts for more than a fifth of all grant applications.

“Italian universities require highly qualified evaluators of proposals in biological sciences,” says the letter. It asks the prime minister, Giuliano Amato, who is acting as caretaker to the research ministry until the general election this spring, to add an appropriate expert to the committee.

Zecchino left the government to join a new political party, which is positioning itself to take part in the centre-right coalition that is expected to form the next government.

In a separate pre-election development, health minister Umberto Veronesi nominated biochemist Enrico Garaci to become president of the Istituto Superiore di Sanitá, the national health institute, once the statute enabling the position is approved. Garaci is a previous president of the CNR, Italy's national research agency.