Nana Mouskouri to lead ESRC

In what was described by Research Professional as a surprise move, the Government has appointed Nana Mouskouri as head of the ESRC.

'It was expected that the position would be filled by a senior researcher from the University of Oxford,' said RP. Instead, Theresa May plumped for seventies crooner Nana Mouskouri. 

'There is no truth whatsoever in the scurrilous rumour that the PM only chose her because her song 'By Persistently Praying' offered her a way forward on the Brexit negotiations,' insisted a No 10 spokesman.

Any resemblance to Prof Jennifer Rubin, Director of the Policy Institute at KCL, is, of course, entirely coincidental.

Eaae Ie Oi Aae

Coming up with a good name for a university is a fraught activity. One needs to give the impression of being steeped in tradition whilst being modern, thrusting, and super-innovative.

As you can imagine, it took countless hours in committee to decide on 'Fundermental Towers University'. Members were clearly divided into two camps, those that wanted Fundermental Towers University, and those that wanted to pay homage to the site of our campus, and call ourselves Acacia Avenue University.

The Danger of Management by Metrics

The Metric-Measured Man

There was depressing news from Kings earlier this month. The University plans to cut 120 academic posts in the Schools of Medicine and Biomedicine (from a total of 777)  in order to fund new building. Chillingly, the redundancies will be decided by two metrics: research income and teaching hours.

Using metrics is somewhat fraught at the best of times, but is positively toxic when jobs depend on it. The idea of having stated targets is something that all universities have toyed with and many have implemented. There are clear examples where these targets have had a real effect, focussing minds and ratcheting up activity. But at what cost? Anecdotally the morale in these metric-driven universities makes Airstrip One look positively Arcadian.

ERC Stats

We all love a good stat or two, and UKRO have obliged by providing some for the last round of ERC Starting Grants. I tweeted these yesterday, but in case you missed them, here are headlines:

• Success rate by domain: Physical &Engineering Sciences 11.5%; Life Sciences: 12.0%; Social Sciences & Humanities: 9.7%
• Top 5 host countries: UK (131), Germany (78), France (73), the Netherlands (51) and Switzerland (33).
• Top 5 countries by PI nationality: Germany (92), UK (68), France (67), Italy (42) and the Netherlands (37)
• Top 5 (or 7) in UK: UCL (16); Cambridge (13); Oxford (12); KCL (8); Bristol, Edinburgh and Imperial (5 each) 
• Average age of PI: 37 (the same as for the previous call) 
• Percentage of female PIs: 24%  (an increase from 21% last year) 

A fuller breakdown of previous rounds of both the Starting Grants and Advanced Grants is available on the UKRO website (pdf). Start crunchin' those numbers...