Research funding is a limited resource, even for the largest of global science foundations, and is typically awarded, after much deliberation, to the best investigators and institutes, via a streamlined decision-making process.

One of the largest such foundations is the UK based independent global charity, the Wellcome Trust. It funds high-impact biomedical research in the UK and internationally, made possible by its current invested endowment of about £16 billion. Kevin Moses, Director of Science Funding at the Wellcome Trust was recently on campus to talk about the Wellcome Trust as a global bio-medical research funder and bring the community up to speed with its world-wide activities.

What is the Wellcome Trust's broad philosophy in deciding which people and projects to fund- in terms of international versus national spending; fundamental versus applied research; established versus budding researchers and more?

So, overall, we're interested in funding studies of high significance - science worth doing. About 25% of our science spending is for low-to-middle income countries overseas - mainly sub-Saharan Africa, India and south-east Asia. We can make a large impact on public health issues in some of these countries with fewer resources.

In terms of pure and applied research, again, it's about finding the right projects to invest in. We have the whole spectrum - from something as fundamental as studying the yeast cell cycle to a study in Kenya that looked at how fast to administer the intravenous drip for children who've recovered from diarrhoea. It was found that if run too fast, the drip kills them! At the right pace, it's fine. So, it was a simple technique, about turning the tap, that came out of a pre-clinical study and it had very translational results, with good chances of impact.

Then, we have our investigator focused funding in which scientists go through a rigorous review process by an expert panel followed by an interview. Most agencies don't do interviews. We accept only about 25% of the applications we get. So, overall, our process is orthogonal.

How successful do you think the Trust's funding polices have been?

Well, our rate of acceptance hasn't changed from roughly 25% and we'd like to continue supporting outstanding researchers as we evolve.

I've made a few policy changes though. One was to accelerate the application process - the submission to decision cycle is now shortened from nine months to four months. Investigators looking to move across countries can plan ahead that way. We've also changed the period of fund allocation from five to eight years, which has proved more successful.

Re-funding a project is again merit-based and the review process is repeated. We try to capture the younger investigators, say within five years post-PhD.

You are also famous for having been the Chief Academic Officer of a non-academic institution - the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's (HHMI) billion dollar Janelia Farm research campus, set up to be a utopian scientific community, that studies the brain. To what extent would you say Janelia has achieved that and what was your experience like in this unique research environment?

Well, the intention behind Janelia Farm was definitely utopian. And I would say it's been achieved to a significant to high degree as well.

So, elements about it are definitely utopian. At the core of the philosophy was that researchers must not be limited by resources; they must be limited by ideas. The recruitment process was of course very strict, conducted by an expert panel again, as was the renewal procedure. Starting with an excellent group of people, the idea was to then give them creative freedom to do good science.

And when it was first designed, there was no tenure for researchers - at all. So, they'd never get tenure. They'd have to renew their contract every five years and this was modelled along the lines of the HHMI.

Second, researchers were not required to publish. They were required to show that they were doing good science to the panel. In fact, I don't think tenure is that significant. The panel is very rigorous indeed. Often a scientist would have to go through up to six rounds of presentations all in the same day, sort of like going to the dentist six times in the same afternoon!

There was also the belief that it's new technology that often drives Biology - like microscopy or X-ray crystallography. So, another core idea was getting the folks behind the techniques to talk to the biologists to foster collaboration and get rid of the idea of departments altogether. We wanted mathematicians, chemists and computer scientists talking to biologists.

Janelia's surroundings also contribute to its environment. The place is an eco-village with all sorts of smart people around. Ashburn [in Virginia in the USA] has people from aerospace and other engineering, the National Science Foundation, the Pentagon and lots of startups too.

Are there other utopian scientific communities in the making that the Wellcome Trust may be interested in funding in the future?

Well, I think NCBS is a utopian community! I think there are about 15 such places across the world in universities and institutes, including Beijing's National Institute of Biological Sciences (NIBS) and the UK's Sanger institute. So there's a small intersection between these and the places we fund.

There are pros and cons to the scientific culture at institutes and universities both. The time-tested university model has some advantages over the more modern institutes still. Universities typically allow creative and entrepreneurial freedom and include diverse research areas, each belonging to an individual scientist. But, many universities can't afford to have facilities, like, say an imaging facility, because of a funding limitation and also because it's very difficult to foster collaboration in that environment. It's rare to see synergies because it would mean that there are two senior authors on a single paper. So, overall, it means there's less efficient use of resources there.

Institutes overcome these cons - they typically have groups focused on an area and can afford facilities and are pro-collaboration but may limit the freedom of the investigator and diversity of research topics.

So, what would be best is to find a middle place that finds the right balance.

Supporting utopian science also includes ensuring that publications are made freely available, so that this knowledge can be used to maximises health and public benefit. That's where eLife fits in. [eLife is a joint initiative of the HHMI, the Max Planck Society, and the Wellcome Trust.]

The UK and India are among the few countries where stem cell research (beyond just therapeutic cloning) is legal, to different extents. The Wellcome Trust funds both animal and human stem cell research in the UK and at the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine (inStem). According to your website, the Trust also provides financial aid for a range of activities to explore and debate ethical questions surrounding the topic through its Biomedical Ethics Programme. What is your take on research on stem cells?

I have a pragmatic approach: if there's technology for welfare and it's ethical, I'm for it.

The Wellcome Trust Centre for Mitochondrial Research at Newcastle, one of our eight UK centres, does research on developing in-vitro fertilisation techniques for women carrying mitochondrial DNA mutations - that involves manipulating the human germ line anyway. You get these three-parent children with mitochondrial DNA from 'the other mother'. Of course, it hasn't been put into practice yet, but that's the objective.

We also work with the UK Government to advise it and help amend its stem cell policy from time to time.

Yes I do, but I think I'm doing more for science now.

Kevin Moses in discussion with WT-DBT Alliance Fellows from NCBS and inStem

Courtesy: Savita Ayyar