NSERC strategic plan positions council as convenor of research excellence, collaboration

Key investments required

The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) will be seeking "significant investment" to position itself as Canada's convenor for the front end of the national innovation ecosystem. The granting council has unveiled a high-level strategic vision of its future role and is developing a detailed implementation plan spelling out the areas where additional funding will be requested.

NSERC 2020: A Strategic Plan emphasizes research excellence, a strong science culture, a focus on clients, an enhanced international presence, support for company scale-up and dramatically improved opportunities for early-stage researchers. The plan was developed following extensive consultations over the past several months by Dr Mario Pinto. The former VP research at Simon Fraser Univ took over the council's reins 13 months ago promising a new approach that's "multidisciplinary and fluid, unfettered by tradition" (R$, November 27/14).

"We're approaching our 150th birthday, we've established the base, we've established credibility and now what we have to do is lift to a new level. In order to do that it's going to take significant resources … confidence and a little bit of change in attitude among Canadians to celebrate their own efforts," says Pinto. "We do need access to increased resources. We don't need it all at once — it can be a staged process with an end goal over a period of many years … The objective is not to divide the pie but to grow the pie."

The plan spells out five goals around which NSERC plans to focus its activity in the coming years. While some elements of the plan clearly require new funding, many of the proposed actions are dependent upon organization and behavioural shifts. The agency is also seeking more control over its funding after nine years that saw annual incremental increases to the granting councils targeted towards specific areas of R&D for every year except Budget 2014.

"Our preferred mode of operation is that the funds come with as few restrictions as possible – a slightly new mode of operation … It's time to have confidence in the instruments that have been set up at tri-council for management and distribution of funds (that) does not have to be directed," says Pinto. "Our preference, of course, is to receive those funds and then very judiciously assign them to different portfolios. We have expert panels that work with us, both academics and industrial leaders but we don't go behind closed doors. We have committees consisting of academics and private sector members who help and advise us."

While the most of the plan's five goals are not accompanied by funding requests, the exception is an objective that emerged during the consultation period (see page 6).

New funding required

Pinto is forthright in his contention that NSERC and the other granting councils are underfunded. For the past nine years, budget increases have been limited to $15 million each for NSERC and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and $7 million for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. With inflation and increases in the cost of conducting research, federal spending on the higher education sector is virtually unchanged from the 2007 base year, according to the latest data from Statistics Canada (R$, September 8/15).

"We're not talking about incrementalism — $15 million (per year) just doesn't do it. We need to have significant scaled investment over time, say, over a five-year period so that we can really lift our grant level," says Pinto. "We've had the same average grants over the last five-years which is $35,000 ... It's not enough to do anything substantial. Our program is such that it's meant to be a base grant and the researchers are then asked to leverage that investment. But it's not enough. So imagine if you take an average grant of $35,000 and transform it to $70,000 in the NSERC Discovery sphere. That would do wonders."

Demonstrating impact

Reporting on the impact of the changes contained in the strategic plan will put the onus on NSERC to improve its output metrics. While the agency does a good job of tracking inputs, gauging the outputs will require greater data generation , analysis and sharing across its various programs and initiatives.

"What we can do better is to share knowledge and develop common metrics. We have set up many different types of innovation activities — Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research, Business-led Networks of Centres of Excellence, NCEs, Canada Excellence Research Chairs, and accelerators run by universities," says Pinto. "They're scattered across the country and what we don't do well is share best practices nor do we have a common set of metrics where people are required to report on certain aspects (of their activities) so that's where we will be developing ... output measures and try to share those across accelerators and incubators."

Going global

Given the proliferation of international academic bodies, NSERC has had to chose carefully in deciding where its participation will have the most impact. The main organizations it currently engages with are the Human Frontier Science Program, the Global Research Council (GRC) on which Pinto is a governing board member and Germany's Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft ( ).

"We have made a decision to partner with research councils, that being the most expeditious way to get our faculty and industries talking to one another and get the financial backing," says Pinto. "Out of our interaction (with GRC) we have expanded our programs with DFG and recently signed an MOU to expand our initiatives."

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