Feature: The next generation
29 September 2006. By Ian Jones.
Anyone learning science at school soon becomes familiar with the names of eminent scientists. Their names live on in laws (Hooke, Boyle), statistical methods (Gauss, Bayes), parts of the body (Malpighi, Langerhans, Golgi) and diseases or genetic conditions
(Parkinson, Alzheimer, Charcot, Marie and Tooth – yes, there was a Dr Tooth). Eponymy seems to have gone out of fashion. Perhaps modern-day scientists are more modest or egalitarian than their forebears.
So are individual scientists less crucial to the scientific process than they once were? Absolutely not.
It is still scientists who have the 'big ideas', who make the conceptual leaps that explain perplexing data, or come up with the models that might describe how living systems operate. And they have the technical and practical skills needed to test these models experimentally.
Of course, scientists now increasingly work collaboratively, in teams. But it is individuals that lead teams, and each team member has a specialist contribution to make.
Individuals, therefore, sit at the heart of the Wellcome Trust's strategy. A range of new initiatives has been developed to strengthen the Trust's portfolio of personal support schemes. Central to these changes is an emphasis on identifying the brightest and best upcoming researchers, and providing them with the opportunities and resources to fulfil their potential.
Bright start
The Trust has had a long history of innovation in its support of researchers early in their careers – including provision of realistic research expenses, enhanced salaries and an emphasis on four-year PhD programmes. New to this list is the Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship scheme.
This scheme will provide world-class support for the world-class researchers of tomorrow – helping to launch the independent research careers of the UK's most promising brand new biomedical scientists within a year of getting their PhDs. The Fellowships will provide £250 000 over four years, providing fellows with unprecedented freedom at an early stage of their career to pursue their own programmes of research.
Fellows will be expected to tackle an important biomedical topic and tailor their own research programme both scientifically and geographically, in leading laboratories in the UK and overseas. Naturally, they will be expected to make significant contributions to the knowledge base in their chosen areas.
This scheme will be suitable for a relatively few high-flyers. A more usual step will be for freshly minted postdocs to build their careers and then apply for a Research Career Development Fellowship, for candidates with between three and six years' postdoctoral experience. These will be extended by an extra year from a four-year term to five, allowing fellows more headroom to tackle challenging projects and prepare for their next career step.
Another new initiative is the launch of PhD training programmes for clinicians. Wellcome Trust fellowships already support many of the UK's leading clinical scientists. To complement this support, new PhD programmes will be funded to deliver world-class training for clinicians beginning a career in research.
Programmes can be based in laboratories with excellent reputations for either basic or clinical research and will provide research opportunities – both basic and clinical – that will appeal to clinicians from all specialities. Awards will be for five years with an annual intake of students that reflects the availability of high-quality training opportunities in the proposed programme.
These clinical training opportunities should help develop a new generation of clinically qualified researchers able to work in areas of translational medicine, and ensure that the exciting progress in fundamental research feeds into clinical practice in ways that benefit patients. They go hand in hand with the investment in clinical research infrastructureand creation of new training opportunities in clinical academic medicine announced earlier this year under the umbrella of the UK Clinical Research Collaboration.
Basic support
As well as these new clinical PhD programmes, a new competition is being run for additional Wellcome Trust Four-year PhD Programmes. First introduced in 1994, these programmes have established enviable reputations, providing world-class research training and mentoring to outstanding graduates in the biomedical sciences. Currently, 14 programmes operate in 11 UK institutions.
Another innovation is the launch of new Flexible Travel Awards, which offer opportunities for researchers to move between labs – to pick up new skills, develop collaborations or establish interdisciplinary programmes of research. Two forms of support are available: Sabbatical Awards (six months to one year), for researchers with established posts to travel to other laboratories, to enrich their research skills and initiate new collaborations; and fellowships (up to two years), which provide personal support for researchers to gain experience in a new discipline or in an emerging aspect of their own field.
These new and amended schemes enhance a personal support portfolio that provides support for the most able researchers at key points in their career. A similar principle underpins the Wellcome Trust's new International Strategy. Not many fellows will be immortalised as their forebears once were, but many will undoubtedly make huge contributions to the future health and welfare of humankind.
