The Drivers for Research

MURDOCH University strives for research excellence, and research function has always been an integral part of our culture.

The past five years have seen significant change in higher education research funding arrangements stemming from the Federal government’s white papers Knowledge and innovation: A policy statement on research and research training (1999) and (1999) and Backing Australia’s Ability: An innovation Action Plan for the Future (2001). These changes have had an impact on our research capability and prospects for the future.

Murdoch University receives the bulk of its research funding through Federal government performance-based programs for research training and university research.

The Research Training Scheme (RTS) provides places for training of higher degree research students and distributes research funding based on student completions (50 per cent), research income (40 per cent) and research publications (10 per cent). It also receives funding for research through the Institutional Grants Scheme (IGS) through research income (60 per cent), publications (10 per cent) and higher degree research student places (30 per cent). Through these schemes, our research funding is maximised by improving our performance in attracting external research funding from all competitive sources and enabling our higher-degree students to complete their degrees faster to increase future funding for completions.

We are a relatively small Australian university, ranking 30th in size compared to 41 other tertiary institutions receiving RTS and IGS. Our 2003 RTS allocation of $8.57 million is 1.63 per cent of the national total. Similarly for IGS we were allocated $4.25million or 1.53 per cent of the national total. Both allocations have increased since 2002. In absolute terms, we are ranked 20th on the allocations list, with top allocations in the order of 10 per cent. However if our performance is assessed relative to the number of research staff, we rank 12th for our combined RTS and IGS income. This improves again when our normalised indicators for research completions and publications are considered.

A breakdown of the grants shows most of this income is generated in the sciences and the reasons are clear. The experimental sciences require modern, largely expensive equipment and the researchers tend to work in teams, creating a need for research assistants and postdoctoral research fellows. There is a strong correlation with success and the research strength of the group and its critical mass.

In January 2002 DEST announced four national research priority areas, all in the sciences for the Australian Research Council’s 2003 funding round. The success rates for applications are greater in these priority areas, and Murdoch researchers work in three of these areas: genome/ phenome research, nano-materials and complex/intelligent systems.

In December 2002 the Prime Minister announced a further set of national research priorities: an environmentally sustainable Australia, promoting and maintaining good health, frontier technologies for building and transforming Australia and safeguarding Australia. Murdoch has research expertise in all these areas, and continued improvement of our areas of research strength and emerging areas to match the government priorities will be of vital importance for our continuing research funding growth.

State government funding is also an important contribution to Murdoch research income particularly through the newly established Office of Science and Innovation (OSI) within the Department of the Premier and Cabinet.

In February Dr Bruce Hobbs was appointed the Executive Director of the OSI and Chief Scientist for WA with the brief to build WA’s science capability and to attract international science projects. He has identified priority areas and existing strengths in Energy, Minerals, Water, Salt and Climate Change, Health, Agribusiness, Information and Communications Research. His focus is to develop large, outcome-based critical mass research programs that have a positive impact on WA.

Our research must be focused in these areas if it is to benefit from future State funding.

The situation for the humanities and social sciences is at the other extreme; much of the scholarly outputs are due to individual efforts and requests for research assistants and equipment are fewer. Although two of the six areas of Murdoch’s research strength and one emerging area are based in humanities and social sciences, we also realise the value of individuals who prefer to work in isolation yet are able to produce outstanding contributions. A healthy research environment must permit a mix of different types of researchers and research patterns.

Murdoch University is thus well positioned to benefit from the new opportunities for research and has a proactive R&D division ready to respond quickly to new initiatives.