Response to Discussion Paper on Collaborative Research Networks Program

The Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE) welcomes the initiative of the Commonwealth Government to provide funding for a Collaborative Research Networks (CRN) program at the level of $52 million over 2011-2014 and is pleased to provide its response to the Discussion Paper on the functioning of the program.

The Academy is supportive of the view of the Minister of the desirability of assisting the less research-intensive, smaller and regional universities to develop their research capabilities by working in partnership with more research-intensive universities. The program will have the desirable effect of enlisting potential researchers in the less research-intensive and newer universities in national research goals and ensuring that regional research questions are addressed with the rigor that is customary in world-scale research activities. Moreover, it will provide newer and developing institutions with an opportunity to strengthen their research processes that will in turn inform their teaching and provide their undergraduates with exposure to research and development paradigms in what’s increasingly an innovation-focused world.

ATSE is conscious that approximately one third of academic positions in Australian universities will need to be replaced in the next decade. By fostering a CRN program, the Commonwealth can ensure that the majority of new appointments will be made in an environment which has the potential to allow appointees to be exposed to top level research and to give the appointees the opportunity for mobility based on their experiences. This is an approach that has been very successfully applied overseas, especially in the USA.

Given its remit to foster research in the applied areas which are of particular and immediate term benefit to the Australian community, ATSE stresses the need for the program to be project based, with emergent institutions identifying areas in which it is appropriate that they be competent, either in terms of the quality of staff already appointed and their fit to the national research agenda, or in terms of their particular regional focus. It is not supportive of a formulaic distribution of funds for micro-administration at the university level, rather supporting the identification of projects for collaboration that have national significance. ATSE would not favour proposals that have the majority of the funding being directed to research-intensive partners, rather seeing it as desirable that funding be made available so that researchers of promise in the less research-intensive, smaller and regional universities can interact effectively with world-class groups and can access state-of-art facilities.