Returnees: Pavel Pevsner, Bioinformatics specialist
"I foresee many potential problems"Interview with the winner of the megagrant competition bioinformatician Pavel Pevsner
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We continue the discussion around the competition of mega–grants and in general the principles of financing Russian science interview with one of the winners of the competition - Professor of Computer Science Ronald Taylor of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of the University of California (San Diego), Director of the Center for Computational Mass Spectrometry of the National Institute of Health Pavel Pevsner.
He won a mega-grant jointly with the St. Petersburg Academic University – the Scientific and Educational Center of Nanotechnology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Thank you for your help in organizing the joint publication of colleagues from the "Trinity variant".
The reaction to the Russian government's mega-grant initiative was mixed. Some scientists predict that it is doomed to failure. How do you feel about these gloomy predictions?The Russian government is not doing anything particularly new.
China, Singapore and other countries started similar programs ten years ago, they invited foreign scientists of the highest level. If such programs have been very successful in China and Singapore, why should they fail in Russia? It is instructive, however, that the financing of the Singapore program is 10-20 times more than the Russian one – let me remind you that Singapore is 30 times less.
Ten years ago, my students started receiving offers from Singapore, which looked more attractive from a financial point of view than offers from American universities. Nevertheless, I did not advise them to accept them, because then Singapore looked like a scientific province. One of them, Guillaume Bourque, disobeyed and accepted an offer that even allowed him to hire a permanent housewife – a luxury that not every American professor can afford. In seven years, he has not only made an amazing career, but also contributed to the transformation of Singapore into a global bioinformatics center. Now, if my PhD student asks if it is worth accepting an offer from Singapore, I will answer "yes".
Do you think that Russia is now the same scientific province as Singapore was ten years ago?Interestingly, Russian and Western scientists disagree on this issue.
In Russia, many people believe that Russian chess players, pianists, mathematicians and programmers are the best in the world. Perhaps this is true about chess players, pianists and mathematicians, but as for the areas that prevail in modern scientific and industrial projects, biomedicine, computer science, unfortunately, Russia really looks provincial. The belief that the world's best programmers (or biologists) live in Russia is akin to the belief that the world's best tailors live in Zhmerinka. Note that information technology and biomedicine are the driving force of a very large industry, and in these areas Russia is catastrophically lagging behind China, India and, yes, Singapore.
How is this possible with so many academics in information technology and biology?Check out the website that lists four hundred computer science specialists with the highest Hirsch indices.
There is not a single Russian scientist there. And I doubt there's one among a thousand. I do not know if there is a similar list of biologists, but I suspect that the situation will not be much better.
I am not saying that there are no talented computer scientists and biologists in Russia, but somehow these talents are hidden from the world. This is a characteristic feature of the province – there are talented people there, but the world does not know about them. This is the difference from physics and mathematics, in which Russia still has many world-class scientists.
With such a pessimistic assessment, how can you hope for the success of your project, which is at the intersection of computer science and biology?When I lived in Russia, I saw so many talented people around me that I have no doubt that Russia is a real treasure trove of talents.
If I could attract at least some of the people equal in abilities to those I met here twenty or thirty years ago, it would be a fantastically successful project. But I've been working abroad for the last twenty years, and right away I don't know where to look for them. Money cannot generate talents, at least not in two years, but I hope for capable people who are already here. The grant will allow them to gather under one roof, and I will focus them on key unsolved tasks. Anyone who considers himself a good expert in the field of algorithms or a world-class programmer can send me his CV; knowledge of biology is not required. The grant funds are sufficient to pay a decent salary, which will allow the members of the group to move to St. Petersburg from another city in Russia and even from abroad, if necessary.
How well is bioinformatics developed in Russia?There are several world-class computational biology specialists in Russia, such as Alexey Finkelstein and Mikhail Gelfand, but their number is small.
One of my universities (University of California, San Diego) has more bioinformatics stars and more students specializing in bioinformatics than in the whole of Russia. It may seem strange to you that a single university in the USA surpasses an entire country in the critical field of modern biology and biotechnology, but it is true. If you ask the same question to any Western bioinformatician, you will get an even sharper answer.
On the other hand, many of the world's leading bioinformatics scientists come from Russia. Among those who immediately come to mind are Ruben Abagyan from our university, Alexey Kondrashov (University of Michigan, by the way, is also one of the winners), Evgeny Kunin (National Center for Biotechnological Information of the USA), Shamil Sunyaev (Harvard), or very young rising stars Maxim Alekseev (University of South Carolina), Mikhail Brudno (University of Toronto), Alexey Nezvizhsky (University of Michigan), Olga Troyanskaya (Princeton). And many others – I'm sorry if I forgot to name someone.
Even if you find talented employees, what grounds are there to believe that you can turn them into world-class bioinformatics specialists?I manage to do this in the USA when strong students come to my laboratories – algorithmists and computer scientists who did not know biology.
They are now professors at the best universities, such as Harvard, Brown University, the University of Sydney and others. What I can guarantee is that my staff will work on the most interesting tasks of modern computational genomics and biomedicine.
In addition, I look forward to working with strong bioinformatics groups in Russia, in particular, at the Faculty of Bioengineering and Bioinformatics of Moscow State University and at the Institute of Problems of Information Transmission, as well as with the algorithmic group at the Mathematical Institute. Steklova in St. Petersburg.
Then why did you apply for a grant with an Academic University, and not with these groups?The Academic University in St. Petersburg is a unique place where Academician Alferov has assembled a very strong team in a very short time.
The university is completely new and open to new interdisciplinary directions – just what I need.
Such grants are something completely new for Russia. Do you foresee any administrative problems? Have you already encountered them?No mega-grant can be successful without the support of the host university and the ministry.
I was a member of various Advisory Boards (how will it be in Russian?) in Singapore, China and Taiwan, and the lack of professional scientific managers in Russia immediately catches the eye. The winners of the megagrant competition even organized an electronic group to help each other overcome administrative problems. Despite all the difficulties of implementing Western-style scientific management, the Ministry of Education and Minister Fursenko personally provided us with significant support. Now this role is being transferred to universities.
I have heard that the situation is different for different winners. While some universities are doing their best to open new laboratories, in others this process is not going so fast. I am afraid that the lack of administrative support and adequate management at some universities may jeopardize projects and even lead to their termination. If I were a ministerial official responsible for this program, I would send representatives of the host universities to Singapore for a week for a tough workout under the supervision of Singaporean secretaries – I suspect that there is a lot to learn from them.
Can you fail?Of course, and I foresee many potential problems.
The biggest one that I have already mentioned is the lack of a system of professional scientific administration, which should provide organizational support for the project. It seems to me that if some mega-grants fail due to administrative or bureaucratic problems on the ground, it will be an important signal to the Ministry of Education and Science that something is wrong. Some of my colleagues complain that instead of professionally prepared contract proposals, universities send them invitations to "come, sit, discuss, and drink tea." I am afraid that a tea party at such universities may not take place, especially if a scientist who has never lived in Russia and is not used to this style is invited to tea. I think if some mega-migrants experience problems on the ground, some lesson will be learned from this. At a minimum, the ministry will know which universities are ready to accept new mega-grants (planned for next year), and to which universities these grants (maybe others too?) it's not worth giving. As a maximum, there will be a revision of regulations, procedures and other things. On the other hand, the recipients of mega-grants should also realize that they will not have the opportunity to work in such conditions as they are used to in the West, at least not immediately.
Another problem may be that I will not be able to recruit a strong group: many talented people in Russia prefer to work in private companies or abroad. I hope, however, that this will not happen. One of the very strong specialists in the field of bioinformatic algorithms – now he works as a professor in the USA – has already shown interest in joining the new laboratory. He will lose in financial stability and living conditions, but he is very interested in trying new things.
And, of course, any grant can fail if the manager stops generating new ideas. But in this case, we will know who to blame – of course, the ministry, which poorly chose leading scientists. It was a joke.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru25.11.2010