Winter conferring ceremonies concluded today (December 9th 2011) at UCC with some 250 undergraduate and postgraduate students graduating from the College of Science, Engineering & Food Science (SEFS). The Conferring addresses were given by Mr John Travers, Founding CEO and Outing Director General, Science Foundation Ireland (SFI).
Conferring Address by Mr John Travers, Founding CEO & Outgoing Director General, Science Foundation Ireland, 10am, 12.30pm
President Murphy, Professor Fitzpatrick and fellow Professors, Academic and Administrative Staff of University College Cork, newly conferred graduates, ladies and gentlemen: it is indeed a great honour and privilege for me to be asked to speak here today at the Winter Conferring Ceremonies for the College of Science, Engineering & Food Science.
It is some 10 years since I last gave a conferring address here at UCC. At the time I was the inaugural CEO of Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) which we had just established within the Forfás family of development agencies which also includes IDA and Enterprise Ireland. The purpose of the new Foundation was to provide a third pillar for the promotion of industrial development in Ireland by funding the best possible research in science and engineering, as determined by peer-reviewed international standards, which would underpin industrial development in Ireland.
So let me start by congratulating each and every graduate here today on their achievements in being conferred with a degree of the highest international standing here at UCC a University which by objective standards of scholarship and achievements, ranks in the top 2 per cent of universities in the world. This is a day that you will remember with pride and with affection all the days of your lives.
You have come to the academic groves of this venerable university, founded in 1845, but with roots stretching back some 1,500 years to the centre of learning established by Fionnbarra Naofa on the banks of the River Lee. You have seen with your own eyes, and experienced with the spirit that lies deep within you the rich community and texture of scholarship, learning and friendship which marks UCC as an outstanding university. And you have conquered the many challenges of self-education, academic learning and social interactions which face all university students at all times and at all places. You have done all of this brilliantly. And, in doing so, each one of you has clearly embraced your own individual responsibility for achieving what you have achieved.
So it is wonderful to be here today to see what UCC has achieved with the funding it has won in open competition from SFI and from other research funding sources. The funding has been well used to extend and to transform the UCC campus into one of which Cork and Ireland can be proud and which compares favourably with the best universities in the world.
I would like to congratulate President Murphy and the staff at UCC for what has been achieved, building, of course, on the strong foundations established by their predecessors. As students you have benefitted greatly from the facilities, research, scholarship and outstanding teaching capability that has been created.
It is good to be here today for another reason. This month is the fiftieth anniversary of the Christmas Party in the then tiny Women’s Club on campus, at which I first danced with the lady and fellow student who was to become my wife. I am glad to say that, for some unknown reason, she has remained with me to the present day.
In taking individual responsibility for your own actions and achievements here at UCC you have become men and women to be counted, citizens of a country and a wider world where the desire, willingness and ability to take such individual responsibility will determine the future of both this country and the planet on which we live.
So, my first words of advice to those graduating here today is that, wherever your paths may lead in the days and years to come, embrace responsibility, seek it out, do not attempt to offload it to others when you find it, welcome the challenges that it brings and know that among the things of high-value that you have learned here at UCC is the ability to take personal responsibility for both your own achievements and failures and the satisfaction and sense of self-worth that comes from that knowledge.
You will also have learned that, in embracing personal responsibility for your own actions and achievements, you stretch out the hand of acknowledgement and support to your families, friends and colleagues. You will know and acknowledge that your achievements depend on the support of many. It is good to see this reflected by the presence of so many family-groups here today. Hold these relationships fast: continue to cultivate and develop them as the years go by. They are your safe-havens in the stormy waters which we must all navigate in the journey of life. Is fíor cinnte mar a deirtear: gur ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine (loosely translated to mean: no man is an island: we all depend on one another).
I would like to say a little, within the time available, about the importance of basic and of applied research in Ireland at the present time. As we gather here, UCC is engaged in the largest capital investment programme in its history with a capital spend of some €30million per year and an overall programme value of over €400million. Much of this is for basic research activity, for the teaching programmes that derive from such research in UCC and elsewhere and for the infrastructure of teaching halls, research laboratories and other facilities that underpins all of this.
I am glad to say that, largely in addition to this, Science Foundation Ireland has allocated more than €335million for leading-edge fundamental research in the sciences and engineering to UCC and the UCC Tyndall Institute over the past 10 years. This is the highest allocation to all Universities in Ireland bar one. In your years at UCC your education has benefitted greatly from both of these investment programmes through the physical facilities provided and the quality of the faculty from which you have learned and with whom many of you have worked. The funding involved from Irish taxpayers is significant by any standard.
Ireland today faces the greatest challenge to its existence as a sovereign state, responsible for its own decisions, since the foundation of the state. People are deeply and rightly concerned about a future that looks bleak and uncertain. Much of what will shape and determine our future lies beyond our sovereign control. The State has, for a numbers of years, been spending far more that it collects in revenue and continues to do so despite the many cut-backs. Many State services are in a downward spiral of deterioration. Basic services in health, education and social protection, which are the hall-marks of any advanced and civilized society, are under serious threat.
In the circumstances hard questions will rightly be posed:
Whither research funding?These questions invite a reasoned and convincing response. I will attempt to provide some relevant answers to the questions here today. Because of the short time available these will be fairly succinct.
Firstly, we all know that Ireland is one of the most open trading countries in the world. Trade is the life-blood of the economy. At a time when the three other components of GDP (Personal Consumption, Government expenditure and Investment) have all been in negative territory over the past 3 years, the fourth component, Net Exports or the Balance of Trade, has been strongly positive: the one bright spot in an otherwise bleak economic landscape.
The interesting thing, when the underlying figures are analysed, is that the Irish export performance which underpins the significant trade surpluses of recent years, is driven by the most research-intensive sectors of the economy. The increasing surplus of exports over imports in recent years generate significant earnings which percolate through the economy and support new and existing employment levels throughout the country. In the case of merchandise exports: medical and pharmaceutical products, organic chemicals, medical devices, chemical materials and products, digital equipment, computers and computer parts and electronic components and integrated circuits account for more than 70 per cent of our merchandise exports. In the case of the services sector of the economy computer services alone, another research intensive activity, account for almost 40 per cent of all services exports. Investment in research is essential to maintain the impetus which exports from research-intensive sectors provide to Ireland’s economy at the present time.
This is not surprising. Distinguished and world-renowned economist and financial analyst, Professor Jeremy Siegel, from the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania, from which I once had the honour to graduate, points out in an article in Newsweek last year that “economic growth is based on advances in productivity, and productivity is based on discovery and innovation”. Innovation is a somewhat hackneyed term. But essentially innovation means the acquisition of new knowledge through top-class research, the application of that new knowledge (a process which is at the heart of engineering) to create new products and services which people need and want at a price they can afford and the distribution of these products and services to the people who need and want them in a timely and efficient way. Bringing all of these components together, effectively and efficiently, requires significant and scarce entrepreneurial ability.
So there you have it in a nut shell: basic research is the knowledge -discovery machine and applied research is the derived, knowledge-discovery-conversion machine which turns knowledge capital into economic development and job-creation through the intervention of human capital and enterprise.
So it is an indisputable fact that basic or fundamental science brings with it major economic rewards. However, these rewards accrue in an unpredictable manner. The outcome of fundamental research cannot always be simply judged by immediate application- ready results. But that does not mean that significant economic benefits do not accrue both in the short term and in the long term. They do.
The greatest economic benefits of scientific research, as has recently been pointed out in a combined analysis by the American National Academies of Science, Engineering, Medicine and Research have always resulted from the search for fundamental knowledge rather than the search for specific applications. Nuclear energy was not discovered by oil companies seeking alternative sources of energy but by scientists such as Einstein and Rutherford and Ireland’s only Nobel Laureate in science, Munster-man, Ernest Walton. The work of George Boole, the founder of Boolean Algebra, here at this university in the early years after its establishment, laid the mathematical foundations for the computer science explosion that drives economic development in all sectors of the economy in Ireland and throughout the world today. Transistors were not discovered by the entertainment industry but by scientists and engineers working on wave mechanics and solid state physics. When scientists and engineers discovered how to increase the capacity of integrated circuits by a factor if more than one million over the past forty years it led to the replacement of paper maps by GPS applications, fixed line phones by the mobile phones we now all use, two-dimensional x-rays by three dimensional CT scans, paperbacks by electronic books, slide rules by computers and much more.
I spoke earlier of the importance of trade and exports to Ireland’s economic development, job maintenance and job-creation. The logistics industry, which includes truck transportation, shipping, air transportation and just-in-time delivery, is fundamentally important to Irish export performance. Many of us do not see the connection between such an apparently run-of-the-mill services industry, export performance and the technologies that represent the application of fundamental science discoveries. But just think of how difficult it would be for Irish exports to compete effectively without a logistics industry which fully embraces the application of GPS (Global Positioning System), advanced light-weight materials for packaging and transportation, the use of the internet for communications and marketing purposes, the optimisation of route selection from the place where goods are manufactured to the many destinations they must reach and including the use of advanced weather forecasting applications.
Such scientific applications from basic research are the underlying foundations of a modern logistics industry. In fact, ever company that invests in technology to enhance competitiveness is benefitting from basic research conducted previously. There is a symbiotic relationship between basic research and applied research. It is very difficult, if not impossible in most cases, to conduct applied research without the feedstock of people, ideas and methodologies which come through training in basic research and through the higher education teaching and research programmes built around the findings of basic research. These outputs are a source of major attraction for internationally mobile investment. It is no coincidence that today more than 50 per cent of the projects funded by the IDA are in research & development compared with some 10 per cent of such projects at the time SFI was established and the PRTLI (Programme of Research in Third Level Institutions) was in its infancy just ten years ago.
I hope that with these remarks I have thrown some light on the question of the value that comes from public investment in research at a time of extreme difficulty for public finances analyses both here in Ireland and world-wide have demonstrated that well-thought-out and structured public investment in research repays that investment many times over. But it is also true that the pressure on public finances means that the balance between basic and applied research must be rigorously and continuously weighed and adjusted. As in all publicly financed programmes, and especially at the present time, priority must be given to those investments in research which evidence-based analysis shows provide the highest economic returns and employment maintenance and creation results.
As President Obama clearly enunciated in recent times, let us keep in mind that: “Science is more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, our environment and our quality of life than it has ever been”. As it is for America so it is for this country. For Ireland well-directed and selective investment in research in science and engineering provides the seed-corn from which sustainable economic development, and the prosperity that comes with it throughout our society, will once again take root and will grow.
As graduates in the internationally acclaimed programmes of science and engineering here at UCC you are the people on whom the mantle now falls to fashion and to exploit the huge potential which science now holds for the benefit of our society – not least in Ireland at the present time. I know that is a challenge and a responsibility that you will embrace with enthusiasm, with courage and with hope. In these important tasks the skills and knowledge you have learned and the friendships you have made here in your years at UCC will, as they have done for others before you and those that will follow, stand you in good stead. I wish you God-speed and well in the years that lie ahead.
ENDS
