Canada should invest in its research talent pipeline, says Canadian Institute For Advanced Research president

Globe and Mail

a day ago

Stephen Toope, president of the Canadian Institute For Advanced Research, is a former vice-chancellor of Cambridge University and president of the University of British Columbia. He spoke to The Globe and Mail about the role of CIFAR, which brings people together from a range of disciplines to consider problems on the horizons of research, as a builder of scientific all-star teams.
Dr. Toope also discussed the state of research in Canada and the U.S., as President Donald Trump has slashed billions in research funds and attacked several of the most prominent American universities, including Harvard.
Q: What do you make of what has been happening between the U.S. government and Harvard?
A: It's appalling. And it's not just about Harvard. Billions of dollars of research funding have been removed, arbitrarily, from a whole range of different universities, always for slightly different reasons that don't meet the desires of the U.S. administration.
Q: You were invited to Ottawa for the Throne Speech. What are you hearing from the Government of Canada about its plans for research?
A: There was a brief mention of research and innovation, rather high level, which was 'to build Canada into the world's leading hub for science and innovation.' That's great. We've also seen the decision to have a minister for artificial intelligence, which suggests a comfort level with trying to deploy new technologies. The proof will be in the pudding.
Canada has some catch-up to play here. We have great strengths. We have a lot of solid and sometimes excellent universities. A lot of work needs to be done to make sure that our own ecosystem is strong and supporting research at an adequate level.
Q: What does CIFAR do?
We create networks of the very top people in the world who are interested in particular subjects. We bring them together across disciplines to try to unlock new approaches, new ideas, that are going to shape the future of research for decades to come. We're focused on some of the hardest questions facing science and humanity in the longer term.
We draw the people who are in CIFAR networks from the university world – you might think of them as the all-star team – to work on these really tough questions.
Q: How do you do manage an all-star team, and what are the challenges that come with it?
The first thing is to conceptualize where we should be expending our resources and what kinds of networks should we bring together. Looking at the horizon and trying to figure out what are the really difficult questions that CIFAR should be looking at now, because they're going to play out importantly in the world over the next 20 to 50 years. That's job one.
Job two is talent identification, making sure that we are well connected around the world, so that we know who's doing really exciting work and who has the impulse to work across disciplines collaboratively.
Q: Can the world make up for the money being pulled out of U.S. research?
No, that's a really important point to make. There's been some talk about how the universities will use some of their endowments, or the foundation world will step up. All of that money is a drop in the bucket, honestly, in relation to what has historically been the U.S. research endeavour.
Q: What should Canada be doing in response? What do you think is a wise way to invest?
I would start by analyzing where we are before we start inviting lots of new people into the system. Are we actually funding our research at the level that is necessary for a country with an advanced economy? I'm sad to say, I think the answer is no.
There was a modest bump up in research funding in the last federal budget of the previous government, but we're still really not operating at the same level of support that many other countries are. We've got to analyze where we should be making core investments to ensure that our whole ecosystem is strong. If we do that, we could then think about some targeted investment to bring in new talent.
If I were going to target the investment, I would say early- to mid-career researchers. I wouldn't be going after just two or three big names.
Q: Why do you say early-career is better than an established star?
Because you've got a longer runway if you can identify truly rising stars, and we've been good at that at CIFAR. If the government could think about a program designed to do that, then you've got people who are more likely to stay. If you invest in a person who's really very far advanced in their career, and then everything switches back with a new government in the U.S., it may be hard to hold on to those people.
Q: Tell me about this year's Azrieli scholars, whose names were announced last month?
This program is celebrating its 10th anniversary, and it's designed to identify really outstanding young researchers. What we're trying to do is wrap them around with support. So there's financial support to conduct their research, but more importantly there's skills support. How do you set up a lab effectively? How do you manage people? How do you establish priorities and stick with them?
We encourage them to be bold, to work across disciplines and to be really ambitious.
There are a number of published studies to indicate that despite all of the investment in science, we're actually getting results which are more and more incremental. We want to make sure that the next generation is encouraged to go for the breakthroughs. So we try to identify people from anywhere on the planet, and what they have in common is an aspiration to work across disciplines and a real, bold sensibility.
Q: How do you know what a 'bold sensibility' looks like?
It's usually around the ambition of the questions they're asking. One of the things CIFAR has been good at historically is pushing people to ask hard questions. Our very first program, 43 years ago, was artificial intelligence, robotics and society. That's pretty darn good in terms of foresight. We're trying to look for people who have that kind of questioning mind. They see an opportunity or challenge that other people haven't noticed yet.
This interview has been edited and condensed.