SCIENCE INITIATIVE FOR DEVELOPING WORLD

["Irfan Khan" <khania@super.net.pk>]

[from The World Bank Development News (January 16, 2001)]  

SCIENCE INITIATIVE FOR DEVELOPING WORLD.  With science going truly 
global, "we have very high hopes" on the Millennium Science 
Initiative (MSI), in catalyzing science and technology development in 
many countries, more so in the developing world, the Hindu (India) 
reports Professor Phillip A. Griffiths, Director of the Institute for 
Advanced Study in Princeton, has said.  Funded in its initial phase 
by the World Bank and the US-based Packard Foundation, he said the 
MSI sought to help a small number of outstanding research institutes 
in selected countries around the world, where scientists could do 
research in their home countries and also "train the next generation 
of scientific leaders".  

Speaking on "The Changing Character of Scientific Research", under 
the auspices of the Chennai Mathematical Institute and the Institute 
of Mathematical Sciences, he said, as the World Bank felt that the 
MSI could succeed only if "guided from outside the traditional 
bureaucratic and management structures", it was decided to leave this 
task to an NGO, the Science Institutes Group (SIG).  

Griffiths, who is also the Chairman of SIG, a small association of 
leading scientific institutions around the world, said, "it is 
essential to keep more of these leaders at home to serve as mentors 
and models who communicate the excitement and value of research".  
Under the MSI, the first full programs were now under way in Chile 
and Mexico, he said, adding, other countries close to initiating 
their programs include Brazil and Venezuela. The SIG had also done 
extensive preliminary work in Vietnam, Africa and West Asia.  

Griffiths said many of the institutes under the MSI program would be 
"located within existing institutions". They would have small 
permanent staff and a "flow-through of younger scientists", who would 
advance their education in the context of research and then return to 
their host institutions, he said.  While the autonomy of these 
institutions would give them a flexibility, he said creating 
international partnerships and networks "is one of the goals of the 
Millennium Science Institutes". Such collaboration should benefit 
researchers in both the developed and the developing world.