We’re All in This Together

Posted on April 15, 2020 by Athene Donald

If life were other, if we weren’t all ‘wfh’ and trying to stay sane as well as productive, today I would be putting the finishing touches to a talk I was due to give at the end of the week to graduate students at another university. Being the kind of person who always worries I’ll be struck down by an incapacitating migraine at the wrong moment, I tend not to leave talk-writing to the 11th hour/ on the train. So, I should currently be putting together ideas about the joys and challenges of interdisciplinary science.

Interdisciplinary science is of course nothing new. The scientists of previous centuries cared nothing for what we now term disciplines. Thomas Young (1773-1829) will be most familiar to the average physicist because of his eponymous experiment, Young’s slits, or – if more mechanically minded – the elastic modulus bearing his name. He was, however, a not very successful physician who got interested in vision and hence started thinking about the wave-like nature of light. He also – just to prove he really was a polymath who simply didn’t identify an arts-science divide – had a hand in decoding the Rosetta Stone, being an excellent linguist. Not for nothing was a biography of him by Andrew Robinson entitled ‘The Last Man who Knew Everything‘.

However, by the time we got to the mid-late Victorian age, disciplines and dividing lines started to appear in society and in education. The battles between Thomas Huxley and Matthew Arnold pitted science against arts as to what should be taught in schools. Universities started creating new streams; at least Cambridge opted (1851) for the still-going-strong Tripos of Natural Sciences, keeping breadth in sciences, sometimes requiring a bit more too. (My memory is that in Chemistry – although not my own subject of Physics – graduate students of my day had to learn a smattering of German, because that was still regarded as the language of Chemistry research. No more.)

The wonderful thing about the Natural Sciences Tripos – which in hindsight I deeply regret I did not avail myself of – was the opportunity not to decide irrevocably upon entry that ‘you were a physicist’ or even that ‘you were a physical scientist’. The option of combining physics with some biology was there, and still is. Ultimately specialisation is required, but at least you can attempt subjects not available (typically) at A level, such as Earth Sciences or Materials Science, in your first year as well as the ‘obvious’ ones. Three subjects plus maths make up the first year and each year students narrow down their choices reaching specialisation in years 3 and 4. Contrary to what I used to believe when Physics was a 3 year course in the Tripos, the word Tripos does not imply a three part/three year programme (and for ‘clarity’ within the Cambridge system, the three parts were Parts IA, IB and II, now followed by a fourth year Part III); it instead, allegedly, refers to the three-legged stool candidates historically sat on for their end-of-degree viva.

I digress, as seems to be an inevitable part of failing to concentrate properly during lockdown. Interdisciplinarity is now back in ‘fashion’, if I can phrase it like that. My early forays into working on biological material within a Physics department were frowned upon, explicitly and fairly depressingly vociferously – this was in the ‘80s. But, of course, working at the interface with biology is now seen as entirely mainstream, even if how – for instance – to assess any such interdisciplinary working within the (paused) REF remains an issue for some. I would like to think the work of the Interdisciplinary Advisory Panel that I chair may have put some people’s minds at rest, but I know full well not everyone will be satisfied or reassured.

For a new research student, however, deciding how interdisciplinary to be can be an understandable worry. If you have an eye on a future academic career, is it better to stick with the straight and narrow rather than run the risk of being a jack-of-all-trades? I would recommend you follow your passion. If working on very detailed pure research in a narrow area excites you go for it, but if you like seeing connections where none have been spotted before, if your niche sits at the junction of different fields – labelled by discipline simply by virtue of the way subjects are taught at undergraduate level, as often as not, – then you should not be afraid to tackle it.

In a typically snide remark from Jim Watson about Rosalind Franklin (in a paper in Nature in 1983), he points to her ‘monodisciplinary’ approach to science as what held her back. “Rosalind Franklin was a very intelligent woman, but she really had no reason for believing that DNA was particularly important. She was trained in physical chemistry. I don’t think she’d ever spent any length of time with people who thought DNA was important. And she certainly didn’t talk to Maurice [Wilkins] or to John Randall, then the professor at Kings.”

One doesn’t have to agree with his attitude to her in particular, or women in general, to recognize that a narrow viewpoint can hold back progress in research. The person who thinks outside a disciplinary box, may just be the one who wins – as is very obviously the outcome in this case – the prize, Nobel or otherwise. Watson started off with a Zoology degree, but by working with Francis Crick – a physicist who was meant to be studying the X-ray diffraction of proteins and polypeptides – simply because he chose to (sometimes to the annoyance of Crick’s head of the Cavendish Laboratory, Lawrence Bragg), the ultimate breakthrough in analysing DNA was possible.

So, had I been preparing my talk today, instead of blogging, I would be concluding by emphasising the joy, importance and relevance of moving beyond traditional bounds of discipline. We need researchers of every variety to make progress, something as true and as urgent now in the coronavirus era as ever. Epidemiologists need to work with immunologists, mathematic modellers with structural biologists, physicists with vets. We are, quite literally, all in this together.

 

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Is Losing a President Careless?

Posted on April 8, 2020 by Athene Donald

So what really is going on in Brussels regarding the ERC? I have had no direct contact with them in recent months, nor ever met Professor Ferrari, the short-lived and outgoing (outgone?) President. I cannot spill any beans because I have no beans to spill, but I did spend six years sitting on the Scientific Council (ScC) and perhaps can read a little between the lines. The extraordinary statement that they have released in the wake of Ferrari’s ‘resignation’, deprecates his own statement with the damning indictment that it ‘at best is economical with the truth.’

I served on the Scientific Council from 2013-18. I joined as legal niceties around the construction of the new Horizon2020 programme were being worked out, niceties which – I must admit – did not particularly excite me at the time. In hindsight I could see just how important thrashing out the details were: of what could and could not be funded, in which ‘instruments’, on what timescales, with what groupings making decisions on different parts of the grant-awarding and just how subsequent monitoring should be carried out. In the UK we may have been told, in the run-up to the 2016 referendum, just how full of bureaucracy Brussels was and what a waste of time it was. There is undoubtedly bureaucracy in Brussels, but some of it is very necessary, as the current saga will make plain.

So let me correct some misunderstandings. The President of the ERC Scientific Council is not the ‘EU Science Chief’ as the FT, who broke the story today, described him. Since Anne Glover left there has been no such person, despite how newspapers have described Ferrari. Nor is he ‘the man they [the Council] chose to lead them three months ago.’ On the contrary, the press release issued on his appointment makes very clear how the appointment was made:

‘The appointment of Professor Mauro Ferrari is the outcome of a rigorous selection process in which an independent Search Committee made a thorough study of all applications received and, on that basis, prepared a short list of candidates for the position. The list was submitted to the ERC Scientific Council, which channelled its comments to European Commissioner Carlos Moedas, who made the final decision.’

The Scientific Council may, if the process I saw during my own stint was replicated this time around, have had some minor input into the choice, but they certainly did not themselves ‘choose’ Ferrari – or indeed anyone else. One can argue about the rights and wrongs of this decoupling from the Scientific Council, but that is how it is done. Just as when new members are appointed, the Council and its President are not involved in that process either. Indeed, there were times when the Council was in the dark about who was being appointed when, almost until the day they turned up at a Council meeting.

What is the mission of the ERC? To quote their own web-pages (already updated to note the end of the tenure of Ferrari)

‘The ERC’s mission is to encourage the highest quality research in Europe through competitive funding and to support investigator-driven frontier research across all fields, on the basis of scientific excellence.

The ERC complements other funding activities in Europe such as those of the national research funding agencies, and is a flagship component of Horizon 2020, the European Union’s Research Framework Programme for 2014 to 2020.’

Their mission is not to solve societal problems – there are other EU programmes to cover these – but to do frontier science. That is not to say they don’t contribute; of course they do. In 2018 an independent review of a random cross-section of grants said

‘Almost half of the projects have already left their mark on the economy, society and policy-making, whilst around three quarters are foreseen to do so on the medium- and long-term.’

That’s not a bad hit rate for a young funding agency.

If Ferrari thought, while simultaneously accepting that ERC’s role is to fund ‘elites of excellence’ bottom-up research, that

‘in my idealistic fantasies, I thought that at times like these, the very best should pick up their best weapons, and go to the frontier, to the front-lines, to defeat this formidable enemy. I argued that this was not the time for scientific governance to worry excessively about the subtleties of the distinctions between Bottom-Up versus Top-Down research….’

he obviously had not mastered his brief as leading an organisation with the mission I’ve listed above. Legally, they were in no place to do what he was asking and the lawyers would have had a field day if they’d tried.

However, although this difference of opinion may have been dressed up simply as an argument about whether or not the ERC should directly fund some COVID-19 research, it is clear from the Scientific Council’s extraordinary statement, as un-Brussels-like as it is possible to imagine, that the differences ran far deeper and more painfully. To quote just a tiny part of their published statement:

 ‘During his three-month term in office, Professor Ferrari displayed a complete lack of appreciation for the raison-d’être of the ERC to support excellent frontier science, designed and implemented by the best researchers in Europe. … He did not understand the context of the ERC within the EU’s Research and Innovation Programme Horizon 2020.’

And later that he

‘displayed a lack of engagement with the ERC, failing to participate in many important meetings, spending extensive time in the USA and failing to defend the ERC’s programme and mission when representing the ERC.’

These are damning words indeed – you may want to read the whole statement! I know that the Scientific Council will not have made their statement lightly. It would seem – I’m speculating here – that within three months he had already lost the trust of the Council and the COVID-19 story was a last straw, albeit maybe it looked like a convenient issue on which Ferrari could hang his resignation hat. I know Oxbridge Colleges occasionally lose their Masters/Principals/ Wardens etc at high speed, and it must always be down either to mismatched expectations or extraordinary carelessness. The former would appear to be at play in this situation.

I should conclude by saying that you should not not go away thinking that the ERC research is so ‘frontier’ it is irrelevant to COVID-19. You can find a compilation of funded projects of relevance to the current pandemic here, crossing all three of their scientific domains. I know that if a grant-holder wanted to divert some of their resources to address a part of this crisis, that would be perfectly feasible for them, as the Scientific Council’s statement makes clear. If the EU wants to fund an integrated programme on COVID-19, they have plenty of mechanisms open to them to do so, as Ferrari himself admits in his statement. The ERC has neither the legal mandate nor the appetite to do so themselves. Their statement makes plain their total disappointment at the culmination of what, as has now become manifest, must clearly have been three very unhappy months.

 

 

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The Story of a Piano

Posted on April 3, 2020 by Athene Donald

As working practices are turned upside down, as our whole pattern of live is disrupted in ways that are unlikely to feel pleasant, I am sure turning to music will be the solace of many. I hear – as confirmation of this – that sales of pianos and sheet music, and downloading of music teaching apps etc, have all risen in recent weeks.

Music may be of use to soothe a toddler’s tantrums or your own (particularly if you are also in bed with a temperature); it may provide some light relief in the current darkness or revive memories of happier times. Maybe, if you are on furlough but not dealing with full-on caring responsibilities, you might consider returning to the instrument you played in your youth but which has been neglected in recent years. I can imagine the idea of finally mastering that Grade 5 piece that used to defeat you, being seen as an attractive challenge all these years later, at least fleetingly. Had I a piano in the house, I’m sure I would like to think I would turn to it for some company and cheerfulness, albeit Grade 5 was probably an optimistic view of where my lessons got me to all those years ago.

However, sadly, I don’t have such a piano. The one I learned on has gone to a much better home, somewhere I’m really happy it’s gone to. It’s the home where the fifth generation of women in my family can get to play it, albeit not in any particularly constructive way yet – my elder granddaughter is only 3 after all. But the piano’s history cheers me.

The piano in question was given to my grandmother as a wedding present by her husband-to-be when they got married in 1917. He was a captain in the army, over in France for much of the war. I wish I had talked more to him about his experiences there than I managed, although I do recall him telling me just how ghastly it was to attend a court martial (presumably for cowardice) as the note-taker. But do I remember him telling me how awful the war as overall? No, I don’t. Perhaps he simply buried most of the memories. He was more willing to tell me about his second world war experiences, when he did his part in England, being too old for active service abroad. Nevertheless, he was able to be in London to marry my grandmother in May 1917, and this piano was his gift.

My grandmother, according to family lore, could have been a concert pianist (at least in principle). She was certainly very good, even in her 60s and 70s when I knew her. She would still sometimes sit down and play – for others as much as herself. She would accompany us (we all lived together) when I was practicing my viola, or when my sister and I were learning choral music parts. The main music I associate with her was Chopin – there were bound volumes of his music, as well as of all the Beethoven Sonatas, also I think part of the original wedding present.  One Polonaise in particular (the ‘Military’) was the one I most strongly associate with her and that was the one I would always ask her to play when I was a child.

My mother also learned on this piano. In my memory, she was an excellent sight-reader – she would also accompany my squawks on the viola and make encouraging noises as I moved up through the grades. However, technically, I suspect I ended up being marginally better than her, albeit much less competent as a sight-reader (something I discovered in due course when I tried to accompany my husband or my own child on violin). I don’t think she particularly enjoyed playing; singing was much more her forte, of which she did a lot in a semi-professional capacity.

In due course I came along and had various unsuccessful attempts at learning as a small child. My grandmother and I did not manage to set up a successful teacher-pupil relationship. As when she tried to teach me to drive, I’m afraid we fought more than we progressed. However, in due course, as my viola playing progressed, I was fortunate enough to be offered lessons through the generosity of the ILEA (Inner London Education Authority) which paid for a second instrument’s tuition once I’d reached Grade 5 on the viola.  Those were the days when music in schools was well supported by local councils. This opportunity for formal piano lessons I seized, although I told my lovely teacher at the school that I didn’t want to bother with scales and studies – I was by then 15 or 16 I’d guess – as there was no future in it and I wasn’t going to take any piano exams. That was my decision, but one in hindsight I probably regret.

Anyhow, I had fun playing in these mid-late teen years, working through various books of assorted classical pieces for the novice piano player plus some of the easier Mendelssohn Songs Without Words (also, I think, in the bound volumes of my grandmother). During my gap year – although it did not go by that name – messing around on the piano was a great source of recreation. Needless to say, when I went to university, all piano playing lapsed. Nevertheless, as soon as my husband and I bought our house I requested that, along with sundry bits of furniture, the piano might come to Cambridge from my mother’s house.

Here, in due course, my children learned and, in the case of my daughter, kept learning throughout her school years so that she had duly reached Grade 8 by the time she too went to university. Then history repeated itself. When she settled down and bought a house, the request came from her for us to ship the piano north. And there it is, along with all my grandmother’s, my mother’s and my own music. Ready for the 5th generation of learners. I hope they will make good use of it. It is a lovely piano, of no particularly notable pedigree by manufacturer, but it was always a joy to play even if, by now, its action may not be what it once was.

So, for me, it has to be Radio 3 for my musical companion. No chance to improve my own piano-playing, but plenty of time to enjoy the music as I sit inside during lockdown.

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Working From Home

Posted on March 28, 2020 by Athene Donald

Hugh Kearns wrote this week

These are extraordinary times all around the globe. The tweet above comes from Australia (at least that’s where Hugh is based; I assume he is there). My last blogpost referred to being kind to others. This tweet tells us to be kind to ourselves.

In the UK, confined as we are to our homes however ill set-up they may be for home-working, it is easy to think ‘I’m being unproductive’ and thoughts like that will only make us yet more unproductive. In the current circumstances, particularly as we adjust, get to grips with new technology, struggle with additional caring responsibilities, timetable our shopping to try to find an unbusy time when there is still food in the shops, never mind get one’s head around the changing government statements, it is hard to find mental space actually to think.

I have heard one person tell me that this week they had managed to sit down and look at data they had been failing to look at for the last two years – and make sense of it. I was impressed. Most people are, like me I suspect, much more in the camp of just getting by, doing what has to be done and waiting for that future moment when some sort of internal adjustment has taken place sufficiently to accommodate the massive changes in our lives. Uncertainty is always challenging and, whatever stage one is at in one’s career, uncertainty will be our constant companion for a long time to come.

As a scientist it is tempting to try to read the many articles appearing in learned journals or a journalist’s analysis of what is happening around the world. However, I am afraid – as with Brexit – I am largely trying to eschew this temptation because it messes with my head. My Twitter feed alerts me to the headlines and, for now, that is really all I can handle.

“Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself. He imposes his own stamp of action, takes responsibility for it, makes it his own.”

said Charles de Gaulle. Maybe de Gaulle managed that, but for many that is a bridge too far. As long as I am busy – and decision-making in College, interacting in new ways with colleagues near and far is most certainly keeping me both stretched and busy – I can keep going. I hope I am as capable of making decisions now as ever. But it is when the flurry of emails eases (as it does occasionally!), or when there is no immediate demand on my time, that I feel a sense of helplessness, impotence and uncertainty at what is happening at the world. I can internally rage at politicians near and far, but that would just consume me; I try to avoid doing that.

That is when the mantra of being kind to oneself is so important. Do what you can and remember “There are no wrong feelings.” as this article from New York spells out. It is too easy to believe that everyone else is managing better than you, balancing the new demands, the new technology and the new external circumstances. They may just be better at masking their feelings, although maybe some people really are coping fine. I read somewhere that committed introverts may come into their own now, not needing affirmation from others that the rest of us in lockdown (let alone self-isolation) are struggling to find.

When my mother died some years ago, I struggled with the idea of the ‘proper’ way to grieve. Why couldn’t I cry? How did other people manage to ‘get over it’? I learned then, there is no right way to grieve, just as there is no right way to feel about the current crisis. We may all be in it together – appropriately, at least 2m apart – but that doesn’t mean we will all feel the same. Or that we will all exhibit our feelings in the same way. Or that those who exhibit outward calm, competence or assurance are actually feeling that. I have always counselled young researchers struggling with impostor syndrome, that just because someone else looks confident doesn’t mean that’s what they feel under the surface. The same applies here.

Be kind to yourself. Do what you can, recognize that the average human cannot change mental gears at speed, or adjust to a different (and scary) physical world without a hiccough. Technology will make life easier for many of us because we can stay in touch, verbally and visually if not physically, for personal and professional contacts. But if that paper doesn’t get written at the speed you feel it should, don’t beat yourself up. Forgive yourself for looking at your Twitter/Facebook/Instagram/ Guardian feed at regular intervals, or creating a cute cat gif (not my own style of dealing with the situation). Or curling up with the comfort books of your childhood from time to time, baking a cake or being overcome with a fit of tidying (this last is also not my own style for coping with difficult circumstances). We all differ. If you want to sign up to online Mandarin classes or do regular aerobics with some fitness goddess, so be it, but don’t be surprised if the mental bandwidth turns out to be lacking.

Maybe in time, lockdown will feel like a new normal, but personally I’m hoping it doesn’t last long enough for that to occur. However, home-working for many in HEIs is likely to remain the norm for more weeks, or even months, than the duration of strict lockdown. I am working on my technology skills, with the remote assistance of the very kind IT team in my College who forgive my ignorance of simple facts, so that I can be as efficient as possible and derive most benefit from all the virtual meetings that I’m involved in. I’m conscious that, as yet, these virtual meetings feel more tiring than being physically present in a room with colleagues, even as I save energy from not rushing up and down to London regularly.

Be kind to yourself. Work as hard as your own processes of internal self-adjustment permit, and in time (I assume) things will get easier.

 

 

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In Time of Crisis – Be Kind

Posted on March 22, 2020 by Athene Donald

In A Time of Crisis

You might think that our present, extraordinary and challenging global circumstances might call for ‘patience, flexibility, practicality and ability to withstand misfortune’. All of those traits do indeed need to be practiced now as we, individually and collectively, try to traverse a landscape that changes every day (so far, always in a bad direction). In fact the full quote that prompts me to cite those fine characteristics is ‘The rearing of sheep calls for patience, flexibility, practicality and ability to withstand misfortune.’, a quote from The Last Wolf, a book subtitled The Hidden Springs of Englishness in which the author Robert Winder ascribes much of the Englishman’s character down to sheep-tending in the past. I found I had jotted this sentence down somewhere, because I thought it sounded like the qualities needed to complete a PhD and might form the basis of a blogpost (I still believe that would have been possible), but having stumbled upon it this week in a fit of trying to put some order into my life by a quick tidy up, it seems equally apposite now in a vastly different spirit.

However much we all wish to avoid the misfortune referred to above so we don’t have to withstand it, we can see that the likelihood of gaining far more intimate acquaintance with it than we want is growing all the time. Many comparisons have been made to the much-vaunted if inaccurately viewed ‘spirit of the blitz’, but I must under no circumstances think – as Master of Churchill College – I need to quote Sir Winston at the drop of a hat. Nevertheless I, like probably all the other heads of Cambridge Colleges, am feeling I need mental resources and decision-making skills for which my previous career has not really trained me. But then, that will be equally true of our politicians; very few within the population will have had to deal with anything remotely similar to this crisis, let alone on this scale.

For our students, as for students and school children everywhere, uncertainty and anxiety are rife. Of course. The leadership here, at the centre of the university and in every college, is well aware of this and wish we could make their path smooth. We will all be thinking about how to set fair assessments under the current crisis conditions. I cannot see, personally, we can just wait until the students eventually come back, or cancel the whole year and start again, attractive though that may seem to them: there will be another year of students coming along who equally need to be treated fairly. The challenges for those making decisions about these hugely important matters are enormous, but our first actions have been directed to ensure students’ and staff safety. Our ongoing responsibilities will be to do what we can to ensure the mental well-being of our students, as well as provide continuing educational resources. And, for those who have been unable to leave Cambridge for whatever reason, a safe and supportive environment.

Staff – in whatever kind of job from professor to housekeeper, from admin to catering – are likely to be older than the students, and all the evidence is that that puts them immediately into a higher risk category. Some will have small children to care for, others are responsible for elderly parents; some may have serious underlying health issues themselves or be living with someone who does. We have to recognize that many of the staff will need to go into self-isolation, even if they don’t fall seriously ill. Our resources (leave aside finances) will be severely depleted, possibly for a very long time, but we will continue to support all those students who remain here in college accommodation as best we can.

Trying to make decisions in this fast-changing world is tricky. What seems right under government guidelines one day, may become wrong because superseded by the next day’s diktat. As the leadership team in the college was discussing our next steps last Friday, we realised that the PMs statement had just shifted the ground again. Maybe on Monday we need to fix our final ‘meeting’ of the day (virtual of course) later, so that we can keep track of the next set of advice given in the daily press conference and incorporate it into our decisions.

Last week was a crash course in new technologies – the university rolled out MS Teams faster than planned; the College was already on the case. It had previously been loaded on my computer, but I’d only had occasion to trial it just once, the week before (for an external meeting). There remains much I, for one, don’t understand about it. Still, even at the basic level I can use it; it works for the current purpose.  We will all learn experientially.

Nationally (if not globally) we will have to see how the internet copes with everyone relying so heavily on this infrastructure to communicate with work or loved ones. We are, in this sense at least, a lucky generation because we have the possibility of keeping in touch, even visually, across continents. You only have to read Victorian novels to know the difference the telegram made to their communications. But what is a telegram – probably only sent in some official capacity anyhow, possibly referring to death – compared with beaming up a face on WhatsApp or Skype (insert alternative technology of your choice), even when that face is on the other side of the world? At least, if we are in lockdown, we have many ways to keep in touch rather than having to rely on a letter which would take 3-6 months to arrive, if it did at all.

The loneliness of lockdown or isolation will be at least partially mitigated by such means, but nevertheless for many, mental health as much as physical will be a concern. Or, alternatively, in a family the close confinement with difficult others, even if they are dear, may also cause enormous stress. As someone said to me, only half-joking, the murder and suicide rates may soar. This pandemic will cause upheaval for everyone, and possibly far worse.

Individually we each have a responsibility to follow the guidelines. The predictions if we don’t are even more catastrophic than the terrifying trajectory we already seem to be set on. (Watch this animation if you don’t yet believe this simple fact.) But, in the UK at least, we are not yet collectively confined behind our front doors. It is spring. For our mental well-being getting out and ‘smelling the roses’, or at least observing the appearance of buds and blossom, should form part of our daily routine. In Cambridge the daffodils are probably already past their peak, some magnolias and primroses are out, the hedges are greening. It is good to notice and enjoy these things when otherwise the world feels so out of kilter and scary. I will be doing my best to derive pleasure and strength where I can.

But above all now we need to remember we are part of a global community in trouble. Be kind, be thoughtful, look out for others when you can (safely) do so. Part of doing that lies in obeying the guidelines and mandates as they unfold, however unpleasant and difficult. And keep yourself safe.

 

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