Currently in Europe we have multiple types of RIs:
- those that just provide commercially available technology
- those that optimise methods for data collection and analysis
- those that do very innovative work (often with collaborating groups) to develop cutting edge novel technology and method
The last two types are doing innovative work, and providing custom made solutions for their users (speeding up scientific research) or creating completely novel analysis possibilities (opening new research areas).
This innovative work speeds up the science. And if we want fast scientrific discoveries, we must assign all RI to use their full potential and innovate.
Why does technology development belong under the RI field of work?
RI staff are at the cross-road of the research, technology and operation. They learn about all these fields. This means that they can
- identify the new possibilities to improve the existing technologies or methods
- see scientific samples or fields which are not adequately supported by available technologies.
- pilot novel developments fast and on diverse samples
- develop technologies so that they work with the existing tools and service provision modalities
Why we want that RI scientists do technology and method development?
There are many benefits for the science progress, scientific community, and the very RI scientists in making innovation work a standard fields of work and KPI of the RIs, beside service provision.
They all sum up in one:
Innovation work will lead to better research infrastructures.
- including technology and method development in the RI field of work (and their KPIs) will attract better experts to work in RI, as it will offer them a possibility to scientifically grow, solve challenges, and enjoy their work.
- the culture of developing technologies and methods makes RIs more sensitive to the fields of work of their users, thus leading to more interdisciplinary exchange, continuous learning by both RI scientists and users.
- innovation will prevent the RI to become outdated fast. The technology is developing faster than the academic organisations can replace their instrumentation, and ability to increase capacities of your existing set-ups will ensure that RI support most current research fields for longer.
- doing technology and method development is scientific work, and it preserves scientific profile of the RI staff, making them as relevant for life sciences as other researchers. This step is necessary to open the possibilities of career progressions for RI scientists. And career progressions need to be possible for the point 1 above.
Does this make commercially available technology less relevant?
By all means no! Most of the RI host technologies and tools that are complex or costly and that cannot be successfully hosted by individual groups. RI in its essence needs a balance of service provision and innovation , and service provision is in most cases provided on commercially available instrumentation or tools. Both service and innovation complement each other and need each other to be as efficient as possible.