Canadian universities part of international alliance working to integrate basic and applied research

NOTE: This story was published together with an in-depth feature story on basic research, commercialization and Canada's innovation performance ("Canada needs a targeted industrial strategy to improve innovation performance, experts say"). You can read that story here.

An international network of research leaders is tackling the long-running debate over funding basic research versus applied research by integrating both types of research.

The volunteer-based HIBAR Research Alliance advocates for projects and partnerships between academic researchers and societal experts to do “Highly Integrative Basic and Responsive” (HIBAR) research. Such research builds upon excellence in basic research as well as excellence in application and societal engagement. The aim is to maximize innovation and research collaboration among academic institutions, business and industry, and government agencies.

“HIBAR is basic research inspired by use and deeply engaged with society. It’s research with a rich partnership and highly shared leadership with experts in society who are closer to the problem,” said Dr. Lorne Whitehead, PhD, director of the HIBAR Research Alliance, and a physics professor at the University of British Columbia, where he’s the university’s special advisor on innovation, entrepreneurship and research.

The U.S. National Science Foundation uses the term “use-inspired basic research” to describe research inspired by a societal problem that needs to be solved while producing new knowledge. Use-inspired basic research is longer term rather than that geared to a quick return on investment through commercialization, although use-inspired basic research can lead to applied research outcomes and commercialization.

“Historically, HIBAR research has been incredibly powerful in producing results that are very, very beneficial in society,” Whitehead said.

Several Nobel prizes are the result of HIBAR research as are many of the advances taken for granted in the modern world, such as the internet and lasers, he noted.

However, the HIBAR Research Alliance estimates that currently only one in every 20 research projects in universities consists of HIBAR research. The alliance’s goal is to raise that number to one in every five projects, a four-fold increase.

“We have very good reason to believe, as a result, there would be a lot more breakthroughs from university research,” Whitehead said.

The alliance’s network of volunteers functions as an advisory body to the research community, providing researchers with information about HIBAR research, its benefits and how it can be incorporated into their proposed research projects.

The organization’s governance body is comprised of vice-presidents of research or their designates from 12 universities in Canada and the U.S. The two Canadian universities are the University of British Columbia and McMaster University.

The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), in its recently introduced Alliance 2 grants program, is calling for research proposals that meet the criteria for HIBAR research, although NSERC doesn’t call it that, Whitehead said.

Alliance 2 offers grants of more than $30,000 and up to $100,000 per year for projects that:

• address a societal challenge resulting in new natural sciences and engineering knowledge and social impact;
• bring together academic, partner organization, and societal perspectives and skill sets; and
• demonstrate how all interested individuals will learn about and use the products, services or policies that stem from the research.

Even though HIBAR research is focused on addressing societal problems, “the whole essence of HIBAR research is that it is excellent, first-rate basic research,” Whitehead said.

For universities to abandon basic research and focus on short-term, commercially driven R&D that companies could be doing would be “a terrible distortion of the university system,” he said.

But HIBAR research can make an important contribution to Canada’s innovation performance and productivity, Whitehead said. “In this area of university research . . . you’re much more likely to get economic and societal benefit if more research projects are interested in creative solutions to long-term societal problems.”

R$