Italian scientists are eagerly awaiting for the results of a €50 million call for individual projects issued in 2021. Credit: Maxiphoto/ iStock / Getty Images Plus.
Upon its launch in late 2021, the ‘Italian Science Fund’ (Fondo italiano per la scienza, or FIS) was welcomed with high expectations by Italian researchers. Funded by the National recovery and resilience plan (PNRR) and modelled on the grants of the European Research Council, it was the first public funding programme for individual research projects in Italy. According to the initial announcement, there should have been a FIS call every year for at least three years, with an annual budget of €50 million for 2021 and €150 million starting from 2022.
But with applicants to the 2021 call still waiting for the outcome, and the second call yet to materialise, expectations are being replaced by concern and disappointment. “Regular and reliable calls are necessary to allow a lab to manage finances and to plan experiments” says Luca Bonini, a professor at the University of Parma and ERC Consolidator awardee. Young scientists in his lab have participated in the 2021 call, and others would be interested in applying to the next one. Bonini notes that research projects risk becoming obsolete if more than a year passes after the application.
Nature Italy is aware that some scientists were approached as recently as March to act as reviewers for the 2021 call, which suggests that it may still take months before winners are announced.
The second FIS call was expected in June 2022 and Miriam Melis, a biologist and associate professor at the University of Cagliari, calls the delay “unjustifiable”. She was originally interested in the call but has won an ERC grant in the meantime and thus would no longer be eligible.
In an email to Nature Italy, the press office of the Ministry of University and Research wrote that the regulation regarding the FIS procedure has been signed by the minister and has been sent to the auditing authorities for registration, and reassured that a second call will be published in 2023.
When a new call finally arrives, some hope that it will fix what they considered a limitation of the first one. The FIS programme awards Starting Grants to scientists who have obtained their PhD at least 2 years and no more than 10 years before the call, and Advanced Grants to everyone else. But the ERC, the original inspiration for the programme, also has a ‘consolidator’ grant for scientists who are 7 to 12 years past their PhD, and keeps the ‘advanced’ grants for established with at least 10 years of “significant achievements” under their belt.
“Being 40 years old, I belong to the [Italian] Advanced Grants slot, but I cannot compete with 65 year-old professor” say Francesco Pasqualini, vice-president of ERC in Italy - a non-profit association of ERC awardees formed to promote research in Italy. “At the same time those who are two years from the PhD will never be as competitive [for Starting grants] as those who are 10 years from it”.
This unequal playing field may undermine promising careers. Some charity organizations are trying to fill the gap. For example, the Italian Association for Alzheimer's Research and the Giovanni Armenise Harvard Foundation recently launched a $100,000 grant to study neurodegenerative diseases, only open to scientists who have run an independent laboratory for at least five, but no more than twelve years.
“This gap often puts careers at risk because it makes it impossible to consolidate the achievements made in the lab at earlier stages,” says Serena Carra, an associate professor of the University of Modena, and the first awardee of this mid-career initiative.
“Italy needs a sort of ERC consolidator,” agrees Melis, a recent recipient of that kind of grant. “The PNNR put a lot of emphasis on the youngest generation, which is good, but it does not consider that in Italy scientists become independent later than in other European countries.”
