Transcript Network? Нет, work! нет ‘njet’ – no (Russian)

BGRS’2004: INTAS/ FP6 Event
'EU-NIS Partnering in Bio-Informatics‘
Mikhail S. Gelfand
INTAS project 99-1476 (2000-2002)
Methods, algorithms and software for functional and
structural annotation of complete genomes
• Four Russian teams • Four INTAS teams
– Moscow
– Pushchino
–
–
–
–
EMBL
France
Germany
Austria
• Established history of collaboration
• Diverse, but common interests in bionformatics:
– functional annotation of genes
– comparative analysis of regulation
– protein structure and folding
• Algorithm development and biological applications
Publications
30
27
publications
25
20
15
10
23
19
13
9
18
11
Russian –
all journals
Russian –
internatio18 nal journals
13
INTAS
5
0
1999
2000
2001
year
2002
2003
Joint publications (Russian+INTAS)
6
+ “in press”
publications
5
4
3
2
1
0
1996
1998
2000
2002
year
2004
2006
Observation
Increased productivity:
• of single groups (immediately)
• of collaborative projects (with some delay)
An attempt to extend and re-apply
Outcome
Score 84 with threshold 87
Sour grapes:
Personal impressions about the procedure
• Electronic system too formal and rigid, the structure of the proposal too detailed and
not flexible
• Formal insistence on collaboration and diversity
=> the need to filter out “token” groups
=> many purely “management” evaluation points
• Obscure requirements for “dissemination”, “application”, “impact” etc. Is not
scientific novelty and importance of the project and competence of the groups
sufficient in an academic (as opposed to industry-oriented) competition?
• Too many evaluation points, some duplicating each other, without clear distinction
between them => confused referees.
E.g. what is the difference between
–
–
is the project adequately focused in terms of research objectives
how well targeted is the research programme
or between
–
–
how realistic it is that the research objectives can be achieved
how realistic and feasible is the proposed research programme
One more story: collaboration from scratch
New oligogalacturonate transporter
E. chrysanthemi
Y. pestis
K. pneumoniae
Prediction …
… and (independent) confirmation
What happened then: July 2002 – July 2004
• Dmitry Rodionov went to an International Summer School
“From Genome to Life” on Corsica instead of BGRS’2002,
• and met there Nicole Hugouvieux-Cotte-Pattat,
• and they’ve established a collaboration, first by email,
• but then in 2003 applied for a travel grant from the
ESF programme on Integrated Approaches to the
Functional Genomics and got it,
• and in October-December of 2003 >10 genes
from this regulon have been identified and
confirmed (D.R., M.G., N.H.-K.-P.,
Microbiology , in press)
• although the application to the INTAS Young Research
award in 2004 was unsuccessful. We will try again.
Problems with FP6
• Two main problems:
– it is difficult to understand, what initiatives are relevant
to one’s group/research/collaboration
– even if it seems that a call/initiative is relevant, it is not
clear what are the next steps: what/when/how should be
done
• Reasons:
– Structure of the FP6 site
• difficult to find relevant information
– Merging of political issues and technical descriptions
• a lot of unnecessary “motivational” stuff
• insufficiently clear instructions for project preparation
Successful programs
• International Science Foundation (the Soros Fund)
• Eastern Europe / CIS program of the Howard Hughes
Medical Institute
Features:
• Calls with clearly defined eligibility criteria and welldescribed submission procedure
• One group per project (not applicable here)
• Minimum formalities
• Simple structure of the proposal
• No need for planning far ahead on the timescale of months
• Funding decisions independent from Russian
authorities
Some suggestions
• The submitting procedure, starting with the
announcement, needs to be simplified, made more
clear and transparent
• The evaluation criteria should be more meritoriented and less formal:
– simpler criteria:
importance, novelty, feasibility, competence
– detailed plans do not necessarily mean good projects:
the entire management / cost description / overall
planning sections may have only two possible grades,
clearly inadequate or adequate (everything else)
suggestions cont’d
• Decision-making should be independent from Russian
agencies
– opening programs and establishing objectives
– distribution of individual awards
• Preference to
– established collaborations with good record
or
– new collaborations among clearly complementary groups
• Less emphasis on “networking”
– huge collaborative projects, “networks of excellence” , etc.: are not
they somewhat artificial?
• Allow projects with small number of participants
– One Russian and one INTAS lab might suffice for a strong project:
larger projects need to be justified
and more suggestions
• Three ways to start a successful project:
– had a long history of collaboration
– started from direct communication via e-mail
– knew about each other and met at a conference
=> The need to support conferences,
especially international conferences in Russia (e.g. BGRS in
Novosibirsk in even years, MCCMB in Moscow in odd years):
• that’s where real contacts form and collaborations start
• important for students and young scientists (who cannot en masse go to
conferences abroad)
• for young scientists and senior scientists with good record: support
presentation at international conferences, if strong results. Matching funds?
• Creation of a traditional natural environment is more
productive than establishing partnerships by formal
“matchmaking”
Disclaimer
• of course, all this does not mean that INTAS
is not doing an important job and doing it
well: it does.