Looking toward the next 50 years of science

I AM delighted that we are now at the point where we can mark the 50th anniversary of the BT Young Scientist this year.

This exhibition and competition has become a centrepiece in the academic and social calendar for students right throughout the country. We have been inspired, enthralled, impressed, and gobsmacked by inventions and projects down throughout the past half-century. The next step is to harness that ingenuity and talent and to utilise it for the knowledge economy we are rebuilding in Ireland 2.0.

I recently launched the Irish leg of Horizon 2020 — an €80bn package for research and industry collaboration across the EU. I have set an ambitious target of €1.25bn for Ireland’s research community to achieve.

Teamwork plays a special role, no matter what the project is you are working on. It does not matter whether that project is at post-primary for the BT Young Scientist, or at university and industry level for a research grant — teamwork counts. That is why we want industry and academia to work closer than ever. To produce research and work that lead to jobs. Not jobs in the distant future, but real jobs. We are already under way in opening Science Foundation Ireland research centres around the country, with academic and industry partners. Irish SMEs can engage in large collaborative projects, or seek support through a new dedicated SME instrument for highly innovative smaller companies. The amount of red tape has been slashed and a risk finance support for SMEs is being put in place to generate commercial value from their research, resulting in economic growth and job creation.

Horizon 2020 has an increased budget of nearly 30% in real terms compared with its predecessor, the Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7). Ireland was successful in achieving the national target of winning €600m in funding from FP7.

Closer to home, we are continually improving standards and are seeing results. The recent OECD PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) results show in science, Irish students rank ninth out of 34 OECD countries, performing above the OECD average and up five places since 2009.

It is particularly encouraging to see the dramatic improvement of our 15-year-olds in science, and that Irish girls and boys are doing equally well on the science test. Teachers and students alike deserve great credit for this significant improvement.

While this is particular pleasing to see, challenges still remain. Those challenges will prove to be the solutions of tomorrow for today’s young scientists.

We have had 50 years of success with the BT Young Scientist; let us now look to the next 50 for more innovative thinking at a time when it is sorely needed.

* Seán Sherlock is Minister for Research and Innovation