European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science Máire Geoghegan Quinn is visiting Washington and Boston this week with a dual mission to strengthen scientific cooperation while seeking to stem the ‘brain drain’ of European scientists to the US.
The former Irish cabinet minister met with Dr Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, and Dr John Holdren, President Barack Obama’s director of science and technology, on her first day in Washington today.
She said both Mr Obama and the EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso want the Trans-Atlantic Economic Council to be “action-focused” on “making the world a better place, for scientists to deliver things that can help our health, help ICT and electro-mobility".
"The US and the EU have the same ideas to boost growth and create jobs. Research, innovation and science are the key."
The US and EU conduct joint research on new medicines, rare diseases, Aids, malaria, tuberculosis and diabetes.
The Joint Research Center which Ms Geoghegan-Quinn oversees works with US agencies on ‘smart grids’, nanotechnology and nutritional matters. Scientific teams devote a great deal of effort to standardisation and interoperability, for example on electric cars.
Ms Geoghegan-Quinn gave the example of the large scale ‘Blueprint’ epigenome project in personalised medicine.
For example, if a woman has breast cancer, “radiation or chemotherapy destroys good cells as well as bad,” she explained.
“In personalised medicine, you have a targeted delivery of chemicals or radiation to the actual cells that are causing the problem.” Scientists from Canada, Korea, Japan and Australia, as well as Europe and the US, participate in ‘Blueprint’.
The US gives grants worth $220 million to 2,000 EU researchers every year. European spending is a combination of EU and bi-lateral projects, for which a comparable figure is not available.
“The brain drain is a very real problem for the EU,” Ms Geoghegan-Quinn said.
“The best of EU brains are being enticed to work in the US.”
When she attended the Nobel Prize ceremony two years ago, one of the laureates spoke of the burden of bureaucracy in the EU. Ms Geoghegan-Quinn then sought the agreement of the College of Commissioners to dramatically simplify administration.
The Horizon 2020 programme, which takes effect in 2014 "means more research and less bureaucracy", she said.
"We are slashing red-tape to make it easier to access financing,” Ms Geoghegan-Quinn told the European Institute in Washington today.
“We want our scientists and innovators to spend more time in the laboratory or workshop and less time filling in forms.”
In Boston, Ms Geoghegan-Quinn will meet the Wild Geese Network of Irish scientists, which was founded early last year to create stronger links between scientific communities in the US and Ireland.
She will invite them to join in EU research projects and partnerships in Ireland or elsewhere. Over the past four years, 1,137 Irish organisations have drawn down €362 million in funds under the current research and innovation programme, a “phenomenal” amount, the commissioner said.
