New at the top: Anneli Pauli tells CORDIS News of her vision for the JRC
The European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) has a new Deputy Director-General, and she has a vision: a JRC that is known throughout Europe and beyond for its scientific excellence, independence and high societal relevance. Anneli Pauli took up her position in April of this year, having previously worked as Vice President of the Academy of Finland, responsible for research. Responsibility is high up in her new job description as well. She showed CORDIS News how the organisational chart of the JRC has been divided in two, with half of the seven research institutes and three directorates reporting to JRC Director-General Roland Schenkel, and half to Dr Pauli. She appreciates the additional responsibility that this affords her, and has already been to visit each institute. Dr Pauli's experience at the Academy of Finland, together with her involvement in EU committees for over 10 years, has prepared her well for the JRC position, having allowed her to 'see Brussels from the other side of the fence'. And now that she's on the inside, Dr Pauli has clear ideas about how to raise the profile of the JRC. 'The only way to enhance its visibility is through its own actions,' she told CORDIS News. These actions must be based on three things: 'the first is excellence, the second is excellence, and the third is excellence. If you are doing things in an excellent way, you become known by your actions,' says Dr Pauli. A recent achievement set to raise the JRC's profile was the acceptance of 10 out of 13 proposals for sessions at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in the US. The event is the biggest multi-disciplinary science conference worldwide, and representation there should be a huge boost to the JRC's visibility outside of Europe. There is however also some profile-raising to be done at home. The JRC must do its bit to raise the profiles of talented women scientists, believes Dr Pauli. At a staffing level, the JRC performs well at senior management level, having nominated three women for top positions last year. But at the middle management and expert levels, women are less visible. Indeed, in 2004 the JRC could count only 360 women among its 1476-strong staff. 'This is a common phenomenon, it's the same in the Member States and it's not very encouraging,' says Dr Pauli. In Finland, Dr Pauli's home country, women are better educated than men, but still do not hold many of the top research positions. 'There seems to be a glass ceiling still,' she says, and breaking through this ceiling requires an 'active approach'. Dr Pauli gives the impression of being ready to head this approach, alongside the Director-General. During last year, three women senior managers were appointed within the JRC. The Deputy Director-General regards these appointments as being a 'good example of what you can do when you're committed'. 'Some women don't get started in their career, and many work part time because of children,' explains Dr Pauli. Mothers need to be at home when their children get back from school, and in some countries they need to be available to give their children lunch during the day as schools send pupils home to eat. 'Societies in Europe in general are not planned to promote equality. It's a structural problem,' believes the Dr Pauli. But there are people in a position to offer more support to women scientists: the gatekeepers to various scientific committees for a start, as well as those that invite speakers to international conferences. 'These people usually think first of the old, male professor who has spoken at hundreds of conferences. But you can usually also find a young woman who hasn't had the opportunity, and who has new things to say. Women need encouragement and they need to be seen,' says Dr Pauli. 'This is the responsibility of people in a position such as my own,' she adds. Did Dr Pauli herself receive the sort of encouragement that she would like to see younger women receiving today? 'I don't feel in general that in my life I have had so much proactive encouragement as some men, but there have been some exceptions,' she says thoughtfully. She points out that male scientists will often have a supervisor or senior colleague who advises them on forthcoming vacancies, and helps them to get the right experience, for example in committees, in order to bolster the ensuing job application. Certainly it was not encouragement of this kind that helped Dr Pauli to make her way to her current position; she received an e-mail, along with everyone else on a particular distribution list, and decided to apply. Turning to the months ahead, the ex-post evaluation of the Sixth Framework Programme is looming large on the JRC agenda. A high-level panel charged with the evaluation is to be set up in the autumn, and ensuring gender balance within the panel is just one of the challenges faced by the JRC. 'We are not always happy in terms of the gender balance in the panels, but at least we are keeping an eye on it,' says Dr Pauli. The panel will provide recommendations for the JRC on how to develop further, and how to 'get even better than we are now,' says Dr Pauli. Other than the FP6 evaluation, Dr Pauli will be overseeing the annual reviews of the JRC institutes assigned to her (she has completed one already), and will be watching over the Centre's transition to the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). On the surface, the JRC should look much the same under FP7 as it did under FP6. The budget (over €300 million per annum) remains the same after all. But 'every framework programme means renewal. Renewal is a forced requirement, and I think that this is healthy,' says Dr Pauli. The change at the top is surely contributing to further renewal at the JRC, and hopefully to its health as it continues to support the European Commission in its policy-making by providing high quality and independent scientific advice.