Spotlight | Live from the Labs cnrs I international w 6 magazine France A new law for science and education drafted by France’s Minister for Higher Education and Research Geneviève Fioraso has just been adopted by the French Senate. The Minister tells us about her international policy. Opening Up to the World interview by CNRS international magazine You often express your pride in the fact that France is ranked sixth in the world for scientific research. What kind of margin does the country have for future progress? Geneviève Fioraso: Our country has excellent standards of research, reflected by the number of French researchers who have won the Nobel Prize, the Fields Medal, and European Research Council awards. We can be proud of the achievements of our fundamental research teams in major scientific undertakings like the Curiosity Mars Rover, the search for the Higgs boson at CERN, and the fight against AIDS, in which we rank second in number of publications after the US, with onehundredth the budget. Today, CNRS is by far the world’s largest single publisher of scientific papers. All of this places France sixth in the world in terms of scientific publications. On the other hand, we only rank 15th in innovation. This gap gives a clear indication of the work that still remains to be accomplished to transform our laboratories’ impressive discoveries and inventions into innovations and drivers for progress. Research must not only be a source of pride for our country, but also a key to its future. The world’s emerging countries are playing an increasing role in science. Does France maintain sufficient cooperation with these newcomers? G.F.: Emerging countries have based their development on raising their qualification and research standards. They are fully aware of the importance of making higher education and research national priorities. South Korea provides a telling example. While its population is similar to that of France, there are 40% more students in higher education. The country allocates more than 4.3% of its GDP to R&D, whereas we have stagnated at 2.2% for the past 10 years—far below the 3% that Germany is nearing and that Japan and the US have already exceeded. Yet France is only South Korea’s eighth most important partner in terms of exchange students and scientific collaborations. Today, in order to remain an important player on the international scene, France needs to attract the best students from around the world, especially from the BRICS countries.1 We must foster further international strategic partnerships between research organizations and institutions by initiating dual degree programs, co-supervised PhD theses, and joint research laboratories. We recently signed agreements to that effect during President François Hollande’s state visits to China, India, Japan, and South Korea. The development of this type of cooperation is part of the “France Europe 2020” strategic agenda for research, technology transfer, and innovation, whose principle I have incorporated in the new higher education and research law. What is the current state of international collaboration for large-scale instruments? What role does France intend to play in this area? G.F.: Now more than ever, to meet crucial scientific, technological, economic, and social challenges, we must be able to provide a collective, international response. Largescale European instruments like CERN,2 ESRF,3 ILL,4 EMBL,5 the SOLEIL synchrotron, or ITER,6 play a determining role in this strategy. “Research must not only be a source of pride for our country, but also a key to its future.” At the national level, I have elaborated a new plan for our country’s managerial and participatory role in large-scale research bodies.7 On the European and international level, France is participating in the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), whose mission is to outline a consistent strategy for developing new research infrastructures. As part of an “extended G8 research summit” which took place in London in June, discussions were held on how to define and expand cooperative programs between research
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