Global Research Awards Showcase China’s Gains and Efforts to Retain
Scientists
By MICHAEL WINES

BEIJING — China’s government has thrown billions in recent years into
building a top-notch research establishment, hoping to keep its best
scientists working here and lure back those who are abroad.  Now comes
a hint that that effort is beginning to pay off.

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, one of the world’s most
prestigious research foundations, announced Tuesday that it was
honoring 28 biomedical researchers who studied in the United States
and then returned to their home nations. Each will receive a five-year
research grant of $650,000.  Seven — more than any other nation — are
from China.

“They’re incredibly energetic, extremely smart, highly productive and
accomplished,” Robert Tjian, president of the institute, said of the
Chinese winners in a telephone interview. The 28 are receiving the
institute’s first International Early Career Scientist awards.
Founded in 1953 by the eccentric industrialist Howard Hughes, the
institute, headquartered in Maryland, is one of the largest
philanthropies supporting biomedical research. With an endowment of
$17.5 billion, it dispenses about $700 million a year in grants to
more than 350 researchers.

Portugal and Spain are each home to five of the winners of the new
award. Dr. Tjian said those nations and China have made unusually
strong efforts to excel in biomedical research. Italy and South Africa
had two winners each, and Brazil, Poland, India, Hungary, Chile, South
Korea, and Argentina each had one. The number of applications
submitted by scientists from China was matched or nearly matched by
scientists in some of the other eligible countries, the institute
said.

Four of the seven Chinese winners work at China’s new National
Institute of Biological Sciences, which is led by an American-educated
scientist, Wang Xiaodong. The remaining three work at Beijing’s
Tsinghua University, the Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics in
Hubei Province, and Nankai University in Tianjin.  Their research
disciplines range from cell genetics to cell proteins and cell
mechanics; from immune systems’ behavior to the human genome.

The international awards are an offshoot of a similar Hughes Institute
program aimed at promising American scientists. The vast bulk of
Hughes grants go to American-based research, Mr. Tjian said, but
officials wanted to encourage work in other nations that are
supporting high-level science and encourage collaboration between
scientists in different nations. They also hope to promote American
research tenets — challenging conventional wisdom and authority;
rigorous discipline; transparency — abroad.  The number of winners
from China, he said, reflects China’s “big investment in research” as
well as other factors. “Young people go where they can flourish the
best,” he said. “And those countries have been able to attract young
scientists trained in the U.S. to go back.”

“That’s a big hurdle. It used to be that people thought people came
here and never went back. But I think now that is starting to change.”
 Some of the award winners agreed. “I think it’s very obvious in
recent years, and we’re very happy to see that,” Wang Xiaochen, a
former doctoral student at the University of Colorado who is now at
Beijing’s National Institute of Biological Sciences.  While many if
not most Chinese doctoral students who choose to remain in the United
States after their studies, she said, in China, “I don’t have to apply
for a grant,” while in the United States “the funding situation
already is very tough.”

“I think I’d have opportunities, but I’d have to spend a lot of time
applying for funding. Here, I don’t have to apply for my own funding.
So it’s an easy decision for me,” she said.  Competing for research
financing serves a purpose, helping identify worthwhile projects. The
United States remains by far the preeminent scientific research
locale, financing more than one third of research and development
worldwide last year, according to the Battelle Memorial Institute,
which is based in Columbus, Ohio, and manages 14 American research
laboratories and one in Switzerland.

But a 2010 Battelle report stated that American spending on research
was reaching a plateau, while China was overtaking Japan as the
second-largest financier of scientific work. Over all, the report
stated, the United States spent close to $396 billion on research and
development in 2010, compared to about $141 billion in China.  China’s
expenses are rising quickly — about 9 percent in 2010-11, the report
estimated — while American spending was projected to rise at a 2.7
percent rate.

Many federal research agencies received budget cuts last year,
including the White House Office of Science and Technology, which was
sliced 30 percent after the Republican-controlled House of
Representatives expressed unhappiness over American scientific
exchanges with China.  The chairman of the House committee supervising
that budget, Representative Frank R. Wolf of Virginia, called such
exchanges “a bilateral program with Stalin.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/world/asia/research-awards-showcase-chinese-science-and-technology-gains.html?hpw