20250528 - [Our Scientific Future]
The global scientific talent landscape is shifting. With situations like the Harvard international student ban and the general uncertainty around scientific funding in the US affecting researchers at many universities, and even in the major commercial hubs, researchers facing uncertainty may have a lower “opportunity cost” to move.
Many countries and regions are actively trying to capitalise on this, like Hong Kong in the article below.
We all recognise that Singapore has a finite immigration budget. Our debates about immigration tend to circle around how we best utilise the finite immigration budget for the nation's long-term benefit. I believe at this juncture we should shift the balance of our scientific immigration budget more decisively towards attracting Early-Career Researchers (ECRs).
Singapore’s scientific ecosystem has an image problem (rightly or wrongly) of "throwing money around" and hiring "whales" (senior, established researchers). Many "whales" are great, uplifting those around them; but others, if perceived as not, can negatively affect Singapore's scientific image internationally through their interactions. Which “whales” engage with local students at poster sessions? Which “whales” try to keep day-to-day interactions with the Singaporean scientific community to a bare minimum? Let’s have more of the former, and less of the latter.
Focusing on Early-Career Researchers is a way to build talent organically and foster a different kind of R&D culture. The hit-and-miss nature of betting on a few big whales can be better supplemented with a portfolio strategy of many ambitious and mission-driven Early-Career Researchers, which reduces overall variance. This cuts across basic science, applied science, and commercialisation.
Many of those who are facing uncertainty in this current upheaval of the R&D landscape are Early-Career Researchers, who in their early career journey are affiliated predominantly to 1-2 labs - of which each lab through the vagaries of chance can be greatly or barely affected, disproportionately impacting their careers.
Personally, I believe we need to put more trust in the ideas of early career researchers. We must move away from CV-first hiring, and move towards a model where we fund proposals and ideas, perhaps through a blind-review mechanism of evaluated proposals. This will help us take calculated chances on those who may not have had the most linear or traditionally “perfect” CVs.
We will also need to address the drawback of Singapore being far from US/EU hubs for scientific equipment, reagents, and other materials (where it may take 3-4 months for these specialised goods to get here). We should streamline import/export processes for these sorts of goods to minimise the delay to what is strictly necessary.
I believe this country has a bright scientific future ahead, but we will need to make the necessary adjustments to get there.