Almost a decade ago, the US National Institutes of Health kicked off its Molecular Libraries Initiative to provide academic researchers with access to the high-throughput screening tools needed to identify new therapeutic compounds. Europe now seems keen on catching up.
Last month, the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), a €2 billion ($2.6 billion) Brussels-based partnership between the European Commission and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), invited proposals to build a molecular screening facility for drug discovery in Europe that will combine the inquisitiveness of academic scientists with industry know-how. The IMI’s call for tenders says the facility will counter “fragmentation” between these sectors. Continue reading Europe plans molecular screening center for translational research→
After the curtain drew on the European fiscal pact meeting in Brussels on March 2, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy announced that Spain would miss its European-imposed government budget deficit target of 4.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Instead, he said, Spain’s national government would aim for a 2012 deficit of 5.8 percent of GDP, down from 8.5 percent under his predecessor in 2011. Some Spaniards described his announcement as an assertion of Spanish sovereignty and a rebuff of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s continual demands for austerity. Outside observers speculated that Spain, the second-biggest economy of the so-called PIIGS countries, might lead a revolt against new fiscal rules. Continue reading Deficit Theatre→
Astronomer Diego de la Fuente’s bet on Spanish science funding has paid off. Last week Naturereported that the graduate student from the National Aerospace Technical Institute in Madrid, along with many other provisional winners of mobility grants, was using his own money to fund his research abroad while he waited to hear whether or not Spain’s Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness would come through with the grants. Continue reading Mobility funding catches up to Spanish researchers abroad→
Spanish researchers are feeling the budget squeeze — until now restricted to creditors of Spain’s regional governments — as the country scrambles to negotiate a 2012 budget.
Last November, Diego de la Fuente, a graduate student in astronomy at the National Aerospace Technical Institute in Madrid, made a bet. He would gamble travel costs and two months’ living expenses of his own money to visit the United States in March and April this year to work with astronomer Donald F. Figer at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. At the time, the bet seemed a safe one: de la Fuente’s name was on a provisional list of mobility-grant winners under the Research Personnel Training programme run by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.
By the first week of January neither de la Fuente nor any of the roughly 1,200 other provisional winners had received confirmation of their grants, according to Pilar Navas-Parejo, a graduate student in geology at the University of Granada and a spokeswoman for the Federation of Young Investigators (FJI)/Precarios advocacy group. Provisional winners of the previous year had their funding confirmed by the end of December — although payments typically arrived later. Continue reading Funding uncertainty strands Spain’s young scientists→
Journalist covering global development by way of science and technology.
Almost a decade ago, the US National Institutes of Health kicked off its Molecular Libraries Initiative to provide academic researchers with access to the high-throughput screening tools needed to identify new therapeutic compounds. Europe now seems keen on catching up.