TVB Associates was pleased to have a strategic role supporting CMC Microsystems to apply for renewal of its operating funding for Canada’s National Design Network® (CNDN), which provides 10,000 researchers in Canada access to design tools, testing equipment and prototyping services.
The funding totals $18.3M over three years from April 2020 to March 2023, and was awarded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation via its Major Science Initiatives Fund.
“This is important funding and will maintain a key asset for researchers in Canada. The network provides fundamental support for innovation in our country both in terms of new technologies and in training highly skilled Canadians.”
Gordon Mein, Chairman of the CMC Board of Directors
TVB Associates is pleased to have provided strategic support to the Canadian Neutron Initiative (CNI) working group, comprised of university executives. The CNI seeks to enable research with neutron beams to continue following the 2018 closure of Canada’s primary neutron source, the NRU reactor, in Chalk River.
On 2020 January 29, VPs of Research or their designates from 16 universities met in Ottawa to discuss a proposed new pan-Canadian, university-led framework to manage Canada’s infrastructure, international partnerships, projects, and programs for materials research with neutron beams. The gathering discussed the creation of “Neutrons Canada” as a central feature of the new framework.
“The roundtable meeting of university executives from 16 institutions across Canada was an historic moment, topping off five years of work to establish a new, pan-Canadian, university-led framework to govern, manage, and represent Canada’s programme and capacity for materials research with neutron beams.”
Dr. Karen Chad, Vice-President of Research, University of Saskatchewan and Chair of the CNI working group.
The university executive participants formed a consensus around three propositions:
Canada should maintain its leadership role in materials research with neutron beams;
Canadian universities need to establish a pan-Canadian, university-led framework to govern, manage, and represent Canada’s program for materials research with neutron beams; and
Canadian university Vice-Presidents of Research should devote their own time and attention to help shape this new framework and to ensure ongoing engagement of their universities as Institutional Members.
The CNI working group will invite additional university executives to join the current group and act as a steering committee for the establishment of Neutrons Canada.
Official report on the roundtable meeting towards the establishment of “Neutrons Canada” (prepared by TVB Associates)
Demonstrating socioeconomic impact from the training HQP in research has always been difficult, because of challenges associated with tracking graduates and following their subsequent educational and professional careers over time.
The emergence of career-oriented social networking, however, has provided valuable tools that can be used for this purpose. The value of any social network depends greatly on its number of users. The biggest career-oriented network, LinkedIn, has seen a surge in usage since Microsoft took it over in 2016, and its user base is now over 600 million — about 20% of the estimated 3 billion people working in 70 million companies around the world.
Many HQP provide their career information on LinkedIn
The beauty of LinkedIn for tracking HQP is that individuals openly volunteer career information that would otherwise be confidential and very difficult to get. A high proportion of HQP in North America have LinkedIn profiles or can be otherwise identified online, and this includes professionals of all ages. For example, in 2018, I performed internet searches for former students and post-docs who used the now-closed Canadian Neutron Beam Centre (CNBC) for research as part of their graduate or undergraduate programs at Canadian universities, going back as far 1984. I found 75% of these alumni online, and nearly 60% on LinkedIn. Furthermore, 44% of LinkedIn users are women, which is similar to the proportion of women in the workforce overall, suggesting there is little gender-bias in the data, at least at a very high level (however, there can be difficulty in identifying individuals, often women, who have changed their surname).
LinkedIn data reveals where alumni are working now
Some of the simplest results to obtain are the institutions where alumni are working now. For the study for the CNBC, for example, showed that almost 80% of the alumni were working in the sectors that contribute most directly to Canadian innovation: manufacturing, higher education, and professional and technical services. Furthermore, a higher proportion of CNBC alumni with PhDs were working in industry (65%) over academia, as compared to the average for natural sciences PhDs in Canada (51% half stay in academia, according to StatsCan data).
LinkedIn data reveals individual educational and professional paths
LinkedIn data is especially useful for observing alumni’s educational and professional paths over time, because most users treat their profiles like an online resume, listing their record of degrees and professional positions. Such longitudinal data was essential to obtaining valuable insights in the study for the CNBC, such as:
Participation in research at the CNBC as an undergraduate student was a strong predictor of earning a graduate degree: Of the undergraduate students who came to the CNBC for a research project, 60% went on to achieve a graduate degree. In fact, most of these alumni went beyond a single Master’s degree: 40% of the undergraduate students later achieved a PhD, and another 14% earned two Master’s degrees. These rates of academic achievement are far higher than is typical for Canada as a whole: According to StatsCan data, only 44% of all undergraduate students in Canada who are surveyed upon graduation stated intention to pursue further education of any kind. The percentage of students who attain higher degrees is, of course, much lower than those who intended to do so.
Figure 1 Highest degree attained by undergraduate and Master’s students who came to the CNBC for a research project (Data source: LinkedIn). “All Canada” data is the fraction of recent graduates who say they intend to pursue further education of any kind (StatsCan).
Participants in research at the CNBC have enjoyed subsequent career progression: The LinkedIn data showed that alumni with greater years of experience tended to fill more senior positions, while more recently graduated alumni have a greater share of non-supervisory positions.
Figure 2 The level of seniority of the most recent employment positions attained by CNBC student alumni as a function of the number of years that have passed since they attended the CNBC (Data source: LinkedIn).
In the case of the CNBC study, a sample of alumni were contacted via LinkedIn and interviewed. Alumni interviewed attributed their experience of doing research at the CNBC with motivating them to pursue research and development or related technical careers in industry and with helping them develop skills that have helped them in their careers. While not scientifically conclusive, the interview results provide evidence for interpreting some causation in the above observations.
Why aren’t more institutions using LinkedIn data to demonstrate impact from training HQP?
Despite the potential that LinkedIn data holds, I have seen few studies that seek to use the data to full advantage. A notable exception is the 10,000 PhDs project, in which the University of Toronto made a significant investment of effort to identify 88% of its PhD graduates from 2000-2015 online. Many of these alumni were found on LinkedIn. The U of T study analyzed their first and current employment statuses. That study provided valuable insights into employment prospects after earning a PhD, and how that employment differs across fields of study.
Perhaps LinkedIn data has not been used to its full potential because several years ago, its utility for such studies was not as great due to lower usage levels, and one could have reasonably questioned its long-term viability as a platform. But the activity on LinkedIn has greatly increased in recent years and it must now be taken seriously.
Other issues could relate to interpreting the data, data privacy, or the labor required to gather and analyze the data. These issues are discussed next.
Benchmarking to aid data interpretation
A typical challenge in demonstrating impact from training HQP is a lack of reference points to know if the results are excellent or below average. If one believes the results will be ambiguous, then there is less motivation to pursue the analysis.
The key to resolving the ambiguity is to determine appropriate benchmarks and build them into the study. Sometimes the data can be compared with insights from other sources, such as StatsCan as I have done in some of the above examples, to assist with the interpretation. Another option is to conduct the same analyses on random samples of comparator groups (e.g. students who were not involved in research, or were from other institutions distributed across Canada). A comparator group would be useful to interpret the above data on CNBC alumni career progression, for example.
Data privacy
Although LinkedIn users volunteer their career information online, there are still data privacy issues to be considered in collecting and storing the information. LinkedIn users retain the right to remove their data from the site. Systematic duplication of their data by third parties increases the possibility of leakage, which in turn undermines their control over their data.
The U of T study reported that student researchers who conducted the online searches were trained on confidentiality. They entered the data they found into secure servers, at which point they no longer had access to the data. None of the data was stored on personal computers at any time.
With reasonable precautions such as these, data privacy issues need not be a barrier to using the LinkedIn data.
Labor to gather and analyse the data
The labor to gather and analyze the data is perhaps the biggest barrier to using LinkedIn data to its full potential. Few professionals at institutions have time to find large samples of alumni and manually input data from websites into a spreadsheet or database. Longitudinal analyses and benchmarking multiply the amount of data to be found and processed.
The U of T study overcame the labor barrier by using inexpensive part-time student researchers. It reported a $50,000 budget for a team to do the searches and data entry over an 8-month period. The value of staff time to perform subsequent analysis on the data and publish the results can be assumed to be in addition to this budget.
There are also smart ways of automating much of the searching, data entry and data analysis. For the CNBC study, I was fortunate to partner with a consulting firm that had a knack for writing scripts for these purposes. These scripts were key to obtaining results at a reasonable cost.
Furthermore, narrowing the scope of the study to the HQP trained by one or more strategic research facilities at a university can be useful to reduce costs compared to examining the HQP trained by an entire university.
Conclusion and questions for further discussion
The usefulness of LinkedIn as a source of data for demonstrating impact from training HQP has greatly increased in recent years. Research institutions are just beginning realize its potential.
Are you thinking about how to show the value of training HQP in research? What kinds of messages would you like to be able to communicate to governments and research granting agencies, but don’t yet have the evidence to support them? Are you gathering evidence of impact from a major research facility to support its upcoming funding renewal?
Have you been involved in studies using LinkedIn or using general online searches to find and your research alumni? What lessons have you learned? What are your current practices to benchmark the data, respect data privacy, or manage costs?
With the recent announcement of $160M to boost funding for “nationally significant” science facilities, Trudeau has continued to position himself as more responsive to the needs of the science community than Harper was.
Harper closed the Office of the National Science Advisor.
Trudeau began with appointing Kirsty Duncan as a full Minister of Science and mandated her to reinstate a national science advisor role.
Harper invested in industry-motivated research, but scientists in other areas felt under-valued, leading to protests against cutbacks and restrictions on speaking about their research.
Minister Duncan commissioned the Fundamental Science Review to help the government realize its promises to take a different approach to science.
Since the Review reported in 2017, Duncan has been working through implementation of its many recommendations for policy changes and for over $1B per year in funding increases.
Duncan’s announcement last week was the latest implementation, increasing the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s funding share of the operations of seven major research facilities from 40% to 60%.
Major research facilities, such as the research icebreaker pictured on the back of the fifty-dollar bill, provide unique capabilities that are part of a 21st century scientific toolkit.
Since these facilities are too expensive to be used by only a few research institutions, they are shared by hundreds of researchers across Canada, one of the reasons they are considered “nationally significant.”
But Canada lacks a coherent system for overseeing the major funding decisions required for creating and operated them.
As a result, the scientists that need these facilities waste a lot of time and energy on lobbying.
Politicians, in turn, are not qualified to judge the scientific merit of investing $100M in a major telescope compared to a big particle physics experiment.
In fact, sometimes new facilities have been built before the operating funds were found – a recipe for a national embarrassment.
Some major facilities still fall through jurisdictional gaps because no agency is responsible for them.
Such gaps were one factor leading to the loss of Canada’s neutron beam facilities, which relied on the NRU reactor in Chalk River.
Neutron beam facilities are national shared tools used for a wide range of materials research.
All other advanced nations have neutron beam facilities because they are versatile and cannot be replaced by other tools.
When the National Research Council (NRC) was restructured in 2012, operating such a facility for scientists from all over Canada was not aligned with its new mission.
So, NRC divested its neutron beam facility to Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd, which kept it open for several years, but it had no mandate in this research field beyond the NRU reactor’s closure in 2018.
No agency was left with the responsibility to obtain replacement facilities.
In response, a working group supported by 15 research organizations was formed to lobby the government to establish a new framework for this scientific capability.
The need for lobbying, when scientists would much rather compete with each other on merit, is a symptom of the wider problem that could be solved by collecting the major facilities under one comprehensive oversight process, as the Fundamental Science Review recommended.
The Review’s recommendation parallels the new Strategic Science Fund in Budget 2019, which is for a second set of science organizations that have operated outside normal funding channels: Genome Canada, and Brain Canada, for example.
The Strategic Science Fund collects all these organizations under one competitive funding program in which they will be evaluated by independent experts according to fixed criteria – no more lobbying required.
The increase in funding announced last week signals that the federal government accepts its leadership responsibility for major facilities, and could be a step toward the Review’s recommendation on their oversight.
Following landmark investments in the 2018 budget in response to Canada’s Fundamental Science Review, anyone who expected major new investments in fundamental science in 2019 was sure to be disappointed. This is not to say there’s nothing to be thankful for – indeed, there are a few additional investments and policy changes that will help students and promote equity, diversity and inclusion in the science community. Since there are no claw-backs to the multi-year increases announced in 2018, many scientists will experience increases to their funding in 2019.
From a science policy perspective, which is about how science is managed, as well as funded, the biggest change may be one item that had no dollar amount attached.
Budget 2019 announces a “new approach” for funding so-called “third-party science and research.” The Fundamental Science Review defined “third-party science entities” as those operating outside the jurisdiction of NSERC, CIHR, SSHRC, CFI. Genome Canada, Mitacs, and Brain Canada are a few examples.
The Review raised concerns, not with the quality of these organizations’ output, but with how they are each governed as one-offs, via term-limited contribution agreements with ISED. Ad hoc governance arrangements have been needed until now because these organizations don’t fit within the existing programs of the granting councils. Lack of a suitable program required scientists to lobby for funds, rather than participate in peer-reviewed competitions. Over time, the Review warned, this approach could “allow select groups of researchers to sidestep the intensity of peer review competitions, and facilitate unchecked mission drift as third-party partner organizations shift their mandates to justify their continuation.”
The new approach announced in Budget 2019 is to establish a “Strategic Science Fund” that will oversee investments in ISED’s collection of these agencies using a “principles-based framework” based on competitive, transparent processes. The framework will be applied by an independent expert panel to arrive at advice on funding for these organizations. Although the funding decisions will still be made by the Government, this will be a welcome improvement over the vagaries of political lobbying for funds.
There was no funding announced for the Strategic Science Fund. Indeed, no new funding would be needed if the intention is to pool funds from each third-party organization as their respective contribution agreements expire.
The Strategic Science Fund could be a precedent for another portion of the science community that faces similar challenges: so-called Big Science, or Major Research Facilities (MRFs), such as TRIUMF, SNOLAB, Ocean Networks Canada, the Canadian Light Source, and large facilities for astronomy or neutron scattering. In the absence of a systematic means of overseeing Canada’s portfolio of these shared national resources, an array of oversight mechanisms have been created for these facilities on an ad hoc basis, much like the case for third-party research organizations. The Fundamental Science Review was the latest in a string of reports that have pointed problems with this ad hoc approach, stretching back at least 20 years.
Stewardship of Canada’s MRFs has improved following the introduction of the CFI’s Major Science Initiatives Fund in 2012, and the expansion of its mandate to include more facilities under its program in 2014. Nonetheless, there are still many facilities that are not covered by this Fund. No agency has responsibility for the entire portfolio of MRFs to allow it to plan for the creation of new MRFs as others wind-down, or provide predictable funding over the life-cycle of an MRF. Other MRFs still fall through jurisdictional cracks, where no federal agency is clearly responsible for them. Such jurisdictional cracks were one contributing factor in the loss of Canada’s neutron scattering facilities in 2018.
Thankfully, there are indications from organizations such the CFI, ISED and the Office of the Chief Science Advisor that they are collaborating to consider a new approach to managing Canada’s portfolio of MRFs. With the leadership that the CFI has taken to fund operations of MRFs so far, and the Government’s commitment to provide much larger and more stable funding for the CFI in 2023 (announced in the 2018 budget), I believe the CFI is best positioned to take on the role of managing Canada’s portfolio of MRFs.
While Budget 2019 might not be remembered for its science investments, it does announce significant policy changes to improve governance of ad hoc science organizations — changes that set a precedent for a coherent and consistent approach to the funding and oversight of Canada’s Major Research Facilities as well.
