Source: Alamy

Solid structure: 12-year funding for young researchers will facilitate development

Short-term contracts, incessant grant applications and a lack of independence are common complaints of researchers in the early stages of their careers ¨C and they are issues the UK¡¯s newest biomedical laboratory hopes to tackle.

The Francis Crick Institute ¨C a ?700 million centre in St?Pancras, London opening in 2015 ¨C promises to function in a ¡°new and distinctive¡± way. The fresh approach will also make it more ¡°family friendly¡±, according to the institute¡¯s research director and current director of the Medical Research Council¡¯s National Institute for Medical Research, Jim Smith.

The most distinctive aspect will be a career structure that gives scientists in their early ¡°creative¡± years 12 years of core funding ¨C the kind of long, stable period of support universities often find difficult to provide, Professor Smith said.

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Shorter-term fellowships pose a particular problem for those who take parental leave, said Professor Smith, but ¡°two years out of 12 is much less of a challenge to your career than two years out of five or six¡±.

At the Crick, time taken in maternity leave would also be added to ¨C rather than deducted from ¨C the contract period, so that women who take a year out could stay for 13?years. There would also be an option to split childcare leave between parents, Professor Smith added.

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He said that progress in designing family-friendly policies made at the NIMR ¨C such as ensuring that meetings are never held early in the morning or very late in the day ¨C would carry forward when the centre merges with Cancer Research UK¡¯s London Research Institute to establish the Crick.

¡°The good thing is that we can start over again. We are an independent organisation and we can do what we like,¡± he said.

The Crick is a partnership between the MRC, CRUK, the Wellcome Trust, University College London, Imperial College London and King¡¯s College London. When finished, the institute will house 1,250 researchers and will have an annual operating budget of more than ?100?million.

Academics¡¯ 12 years at the centre will be split into two periods of six, roughly equating to the US ¡°assistant¡± and then ¡°associate¡± professor levels. These periods would be separated by a review to check that researchers are ¡°on track¡±, but the review would not use publication-based metrics, said Professor Smith.

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Only a tiny fraction will stay on to form a third layer of senior scientists, he added, with most leaving to take up positions elsewhere and fulfil the Crick¡¯s remit to boost biomedicine across the country.

elizabeth.gibney@tsleducation.com