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What is the situation with Personnel in Life Sciences?
The field of "Living Systems” is a priority in the Scientific and Science Education Personnel FTP, which is evident from the statistical data on the event Conduct of Scientific Research by Educational Scientific Center Staff (Table 1).
The overall level of competition in 2009 was 5.1 applications per grant. For comparison, in 2009 the average level of
competition in the "nanotechnology and nanomaterials” field was 8 applications per grant.
Interestingly, judging by the first stages of the "Living Systems” in 2010, competition has increased as compared to 2009; however, the average size of a contract in 2010 is much smaller (this is probably because of the inadequacies in the governmental
purchases legislature). The increased competition is due to the increasing phenomenon of "price dumping” applications which use the flaws of the Federal Law № 94 on Government Purchases and which leads to the breaking-up of government funds into ever smaller grants. In practice, the average amount of a grant in 2010 is 1.5-2 times smaller than was planned
Table 1.
Name of the indicator Event 1.1
2009 2010*
Number of application (Life Sciences) 421 333
Number of supported ESC projects (Life Sciences) 82 43
Overall amount of funds, million rubles 986.0 377.9
In 2009 312.6 -
In 2010 353.0 126.0
Average size of contract, million rubles 12.0 8.8
In 2009 3.8 -
In 2010 4.3 2.9
Maximum size of contract, million rubles 15.0 12.5
In 2009 5.0 -
In 2010 5.0 4.2
Minimum size of contract, million rubles 6.0 4.5
In 2009 0.5 -
In 2010 2.0 1.5
*The 2010 competitions are still in progress.
Table 2
Theme groups Competition Number of projects Number of applications
2009 2010 2009 2010 2009 2010
141 General biology and genetics 2.4 7.8 12 4 29 31
142 Physico-chemical biology 2.6 6.2 12 5 31 31
143 Fundamental medicine 4.9 5.5 19 14 94 77
201 Biocatalytic technology 4.5 11.5 4 2 18 23
202 Biomedical protection technologies 9.0 9.3 20 14 179 130
203 Genomic technology 5.0 10.3 3 4 15 41
204 Cellular technology 5.0 3 - 15 -
205 Bioengineering 3,3 4 - 13 -
206 Bioinformatic technology 7,0 2 - 14 -
209 Creation of biocompatible materials 4,3 3 - 13 -
Average \ Amount 5.1 7.7 82 43 421 333
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by the authors of the FTP project during its development.
Table 2 shows the distribution of applications and contracts between fields in the section of Living Systems.
Data on the affiliation of the winning organizations are also of some interest. If it were not for the flaws of the law on governmental purchases, these data could be considered to be a realistic rating of Life Sciences centers affiliated with various agencies. However, the current data are not as valuable as that.
Notably, MSU, which won 7 ESC grants in 2009, won only one in 2010.
Table 3.
Higher educational facilities of the Ministry of Education (RosObr) 42
RAS 38
RAMS 18
Higher educational facilities of the Ministry of Health and institutions of its agencies 16
Lomonosov MSU 8
Russian Academy of Agricultural and Livestock Sciences 1
Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock 1
Others (Karpov Scientific Research Institute of Physical Chemistry) 1
Overall 125
* The listed numbers are the number of supported ESC applications, not the number of winning organizations
Nevertheless, this university is still the leader in the number of ESCs among all participating organizations.
Table 4 shows the 15 most active participants in the ESC grant competition in the field of Living Systems in 2009-2010.
As we can see, 11 of the 15 organizations which applied for more than 8 grants are higher educational institutions. However, the success ratio (which indirectly reflects the quality and scientific level of the presented projects) is higher for research institutes of the Biology Division of RAS as
compared to universities, research institutes of the other RAS divisions and other agencies. The RAS Institute of Molecular Biology and RAS Institute of Gene Biology won two grants each after having applied for three each. Identical results (2 contracts per 3 applications) were also obtained by other acknowledged biological centers: The Pushkino State University, Research Institute of Physico-Chemical Medicine, and others.
In conclusion, we list the organizations with the most funding for their contracts according to the results of the completed competitions in 2010 (Table 5):
Table 4.
Organization Number of applications Number of contracts
Novosibirsk State University 11 3
South Federal University 10 1
Immanuel Kant Russian Governmental University 10 1
RAS Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Biophysics 9 2
Peoples Friendship University of Russia 9 2
Siberian State Medical University of the Federal Health and Social Development Agency 9 3
Tomsk State University 9 1
Saint-Petersburg State Polytechnical University 8 0
Saint-Petersburg State University 8 2
RAMS Cardiology Research instate of the Siberian branch of RAMS 8 1
RAS institute of chemical biology and fundamental medicine of the Siberian Branch of RAS 8 3
National nuclear research university of the Moscow Engineering and Physics Institute 8 1
Department of Biology of the M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University 8 1
RAS Institute of Molecular Genetics 8 3
N.G. Chernishevsky Saratov State University 8 2
Table 5.
Organization Project Size of contract (in millions of rubles).
Research Institute of Physico-Chemical Medicine of the Federal Medico-biological agency Study of the paracrine mechanisms behind the effect of mesenchimal stem cells on the regeneration of tissues using proteome analysis 12.5
Research Institute of Urology of the Federal Agency for Highly Technological Medical Assistance Development of a comprehensive diagnostic and metric system for studying the functional activity of the higher an lower urinary ducts 12.0
Moscow Energetic Institute (Technical University) Study of the condition and evolutionary change of biological objects using remote laser diagnostics 11.0
K.I. Skryabin Moscow State Academy of Veterinary Medicine and Biotechnology Development of innovational diagnostic methods using animal physiology and biochemistry as a model for medical use 10.8
Department of Chemistry of the M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University Development of a method for the molecular monitoring of the spread of viral infections and for determining the effectiveness of antiviral compounds in order to create the next generation of therapeutic drugs 10.8
This material was prepared by Ivan Sterligov using materials from the National Personnel Training Foundation (NPTF) -Analytical Administration Board of FTPs. The editors thank Alexander Kalyagin (NPTF).
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