National Launch of Marie Curie Programme in FP7
21st May 2007, Crowne Plaza Hotel and Conference Centre, Santry, Dublin 9
Professor Kennth Dawson
University College Dublin
We sought funding within the Marie Curie scheme for several reasons. Firstly, with that program one can apply for any area of science, and the PI and consortium are able to define themselves what they want to do, and present their ideas for peer review. This approach sometimes works better when one is doing more fundamental or exploratory science, where the field is not yet well-defined, and there may not be an explicit call in some of the other programs that would suit.
In our case we had clear ideas that there was a new field of 'Arrested Matter' opening up in science. By this I mean that, instead of the more usual 'equilibrium' phases or states of matter (such as water or ice) which people are taught about at school and college, we felt it might be possible to begin to understand the much more complicated states such as glasses, composites, biomaterials, and such things. The key paradigm here was that particles or molecules in the system are just 'trapped' or stuck where they are, rather then settling down to their most favored position. This is a bit like a traffic jam for particles; things just don’t move because they depend on everyone else to move, and this leads to an almost unlimited range of solid-like materials. These are far more common in nature than then the simple phases we are taught about, and much more important in industry in everything from medical implants, novel structural materials, new electronic devices and gels in the food industry. However, they were always viewed as 'too complicated', and left to engineers or industry to worry about. The peculiar thing was that, even though we wanted to do deeply fundamental science, it was actually going to impinge strongly on industry and applications, and paradoxically it was a 'bottom up' Marie Curie scheme that allowed us to framework to capture the ideas we wanted to.
The second major reason for becoming involved in the Marie Curie scheme had to do with the history of the idea for the program itself. In fact, it started around several students who were working between Rome and Dublin, and not only was the science going well, but the whole concept of students having inputs from more than one supervisor in different locations, thereby acquiring a whole new range of skills, was also working really well. In fact, looking back on the first phase of the program, the science has worked very well indeed, but perhaps the most exciting success has been the implications for the students that have been involved around this whole program. Emanuella Zacarelli returned to Rome to a position there (no an easy thing to find in Italy at the minute), Giuseppe Foffi went to EPFL in Lausanne, where he is now an Assistant Professor. Paolo de Gregorio discovered a novel method in the theory of the field, and was awarded one of Italy's highest prizes given normally to distinguished Professors, even though he was still a finishing student. The more recent students (Davide Cellai, Francesca Terrano, and Paulo Pinto are funded from the Marie Curie Network, and Andrzej Fima works closely with them) are also doing very well and we expect great things from them too. This whole approach has also created a wonderful atmosphere in the group, making it cosmopolitan, dynamic, and an excellent experience for the Irish young researchers also. Perhaps the greatest pleasure of this whole thing is that we are seeing the vision of students having a truly European education, building excellence from a variety of experiences.
All of the European programs have this wonderful facility of combining the best of European science, and they are very exciting to organize and contribute to. They also produce some of the international science, and represent Europe well.
However (and here I speak from a purely personal point of view as a Professor and educator), in some deep sense the Marie Curie scheme seems the most fundamentally European program of all, for it is more than money- it also an idea. It emphasizes the people we teach, and their achievements. In our group we like to have very close contacts and individual interactions between students and teacher, and see a great part of the achievement not just in scientific terms, but also in the distinction and excellence achieved by the young researchers. This element is missing in most of the more purely research and development driven programs at National and European level, which focus more on the tangible outputs. That this is perceived by the Marie Curie scheme as a central element is therefore very helpful, for it means that the efforts and energy of the Professors to develop young researchers (often not clearly recognized when it is done well) is explicitly appreciated by the Commission and its Program Officers, being part of the mid term review which determines how successful the program is. The outcome is a feeling of achievement and success for all of the stakeholders, the young and the older.
We do, and will continue to, work hard to compete for grants of all types at National and European level. But to the Marie Curie scheme is reserved a special, very personal, and most highly respected place.
Figure showing simulation snapshots of (a) an equilibrium crystal structure, and (b) an arrested structure where the particles were “trapped” by their neighbours and unable to form a crystal.
Legend: white spheres - empty space; grey spheres – particles; blue spheres - particles which have moved during the previous Monte Carlo step.
The project 'Arrested Matter' that was funded by the Marie Curie
