From the Chancellery
by Professor Caroline McMillen,
Pro Vice Chancellor and Vice President,
Research & Innovation
Building research capacity in interesting times
In this edition of UniSA News we take the opportunity to congratulate a group of UniSA researchers who have achieved recognition at different stages of their careers for their tremendous work and for the significant contributions they have made to the State and to their national and international research fields.
As Pro VC for Research and Innovation, it’s great to see first-hand how all of the hard work put in behind the scenes ensures that the calibre of our applications reflects the excellence of the research and to enjoy and celebrate the success of our researchers and their teams.
But in an aspirational organisation such as ours, which is rapidly building its research capacity to meet the significant challenges of the future, it is perhaps as important to also take the time to commiserate with many of our researchers as they deal with the inevitable "lows" which come with being part of the highly competitive world of research.
During the past few years, we have had a major focus on supporting researchers develop national competitive grant applications, including most recently the important ARC Linkage Grants, recognising that external peer reviewers can provide great advice in the draft stages of an application and that some funds to generate pilot data can help develop a more competitive application in time for the next grant round if needed.
Our Development Grant schemes have led to an increase in the number and quality of our grant applications but it’s inevitable that because of national success rates of often less than 20 per cent that we are going to fail many more times than we succeed in these early days of building our research capacity. This is why we invite all of our researchers who have worked hard to submit an application to "celebrate and commiserate" at a very informal event "down the pub" when the outcomes of the funding schemes are announced. All seasoned researchers know that success comes with persistence, polishing, redrafting and that the stamina to go back into the fray after being knocked back is what defines the successful researcher.
I’m delighted that we’re also working very hard our with our Early Career Researcher and Research Leadership Development Programs to emphasise this important message – in one recent presentation to the emerging research leaders, I talked about how experienced researchers initially deal with the failure of their favourite grants (in my case, large doses of chocolate and reality TV work every time) before regrouping to build a stronger more competitive and successful application.
It is these programs in which we work to develop the next generation of researchers at UniSA which are critical for our future aspirations as a place where great research and great researchers thrive.
The pride in our achievements is the greater for the recognition of the effort along the path and so to all of the researchers featured in this edition - we toast your success and say well done!