The HRC’s Sir Charles Hercus Health Research Fellowship (SCHF) is an advanced postdoctoral fellowship established in 2003 to support the future leaders of health research in New Zealand. An evaluation of the fellowship began at the end of 2015 to provide the HRC with an understanding of whether the goal of supporting New Zealand’s future health research leaders – with the ability to contribute to health and economic gains for New Zealand – was being achieved, and to identify how this goal could be better supported. When the evaluation began, a total of 33 fellowships had been supported, with the majority (90 per cent) of these fellowships in biomedical research.
Through an online survey we asked past fellowship holders to identify the impediments for career progression; the ways in which they felt emerging and mid-career research fellows could be better supported in the research environment; and where they thought there were gaps in career support. Adding to this information, was an analysis of contractual data, including final reports, which provided information on research advancement and impact.
Since the last evaluation of the SCHF in 2009, 14 SCHFs have been completed and final reports submitted. Of these fellows, 10 completed the online survey (a 71 per cent response rate), all were biomedical researchers, and six were women. Of the 119 applications received for the SCHF, 64 per cent have been from women. However, overall women have had a low success rate (19 per cent) for attaining a SCHF since the inception of the award, compared to the success rate for men (42 per cent). In the past five years, the overall success rate for the award has been 25 per cent.
Over the five-year period (2010/2011 – 2014/2015), SCHFs made up 16 per cent of the HRC’s salaried postdoctoral workforce, with 50 per cent of these contracts in the areas of cardiovascular disease (24 per cent); CNS/neurological disorders (21 per cent) or oncology and cancer (15 per cent).
The following are the key findings from the evaluation:
- Nearly all fellows had advanced their research careers since the inception of their fellowship, and had established themselves as independent researchers leading research teams responsible for staff and students. On completion of the fellowship, 13 fellows were in more senior positions, one of whom had progressed to head of department.
- All 14 fellows secured further research funding, with half being named investigators on both HRC projects and programmes.
- All ten survey respondents are now leading their own research teams, and were positive about the value the fellowship provided in terms of the freedom it allowed them to establish themselves as independent researchers, forming a research team to support their research, and establishing relationships with collaborators without the pressure of teaching and faculty responsibilities.
- Training and mentoring emerging researchers was a major part of the fellows’ role, with all the fellows supervising students (42 in total), of whom 30 are undertaking a PhD.
- Fellows’ research had contributed to expanding knowledge in their field, with the translation of this knowledge into clinical settings, the generation of intellectual property, and the development of new and improved techniques and methodologies.The uniqueness of these methods and techniques were attributed to attracting both national and international collaborators to their research, which had brought new expertise and resources to their research.
- Fellows received significant recognition of their work through awards and prizes, including the Zonta Science Award for an emerging woman scientist; the Prime Minister’s Prize for Science Media Communication; the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Callaghan Medal, and the HRC’s Liley Medal. One fellow attended the Science Foo Camp – organised annually by Google, Nature, Digital Science and O-Reilly Media.This event is by invitation only and brings together 250 people from around the world identified as conducting ground-breaking work.
- Fellows were prolific in the dissemination of their research findings through academic avenues, producing an average of 13 peer-reviewed publications per fellow, which is equivalent to the average output from an HRC programme contract in the HRC’s recent bibliometric survey.
- Although traditional academic avenues of dissemination were high, most fellows did not report activities which had engaged the public in their research.
- While fellows had been successful in advancing their research and careers, they highlighted significant barriers that faced emerging and mid-career researchers. The significant stumbling blocks to career progression were identified as a lack of tenured positions and an over-subscription for these positions, and limited research funding in a highly competitive environment.
- Of the 10 fellows surveyed, five had secured tenured positions at a university, while the remaining five fellows were reliant on external funding to support their salary, and their research.
- Fellows were aware of other postdoctoral fellows having to leave research careers to pursue other professions, or pursuing their research career overseas. Two of the four fellows repatriated through the Hercus fellowship were investigating research opportunities overseas, given the austere funding environment.
- Mid-career was identified by fellows as where the biggest gap in career support appeared, with the mid-career researcher no longer eligible for postdoctoral funding, but without the track record of the senior researcher for whom they must compete for funding.
- Mentors were identified as important in fostering and supporting researchers’ career progression. As such, mentorship programmes, which include career planning and succession planning for researchers, and the development of the skills required to be a successful research leader, were viewed as one means of supporting fellows in their career progression.
- Other suggestions for support were an increase in funding to support mid-career researchers, and to ensure that the fellowship keeps up with the costs of inflation, and that the workplace is a flexible environment supportive of researchers’ responsibilities outside of work.