Estonia’s science agency chief urges society to share responsibility

Estonian science faces difficult choices in the coming years as funding may decline, competition intensifies and the career prospects of young researchers remain uncertain, ERR reports. Kristiina Tõnnisson, head of the Estonian Research Agency, said Estonia must balance academic freedom with national priorities and make science’s impact on society more visible.

Tõnnisson has led the national research funding agency for nearly five months. Before that, she headed the University of Tartu’s Johan Skytte Institute and competed for research funding, wrote grant applications and justified plans to funders.

She said distributing funding was more difficult than applying for it because applicants primarily consider the interests of themselves and their teams. As a funder, she now sees the different principles that have shaped Estonia’s system and must consider whether the current arrangements are the best or fairest possible.

The greatest debate concerns the agency’s group grants and starting grants, and how they are allocated. Estonia has six fields of research and between 16 and 19 evaluation panels that decide which applications receive funding.

Tõnnisson recently compared the system with arrangements in other countries. Finland has 42 panels, meaning its funding is divided among 42 groups, while Latvia has four. She said comparing these extremes could help determine whether changing certain factors would produce a fairer system.

She said the current system had not brought her any major surprises. Researchers applying for funding must understand the system as thoroughly as possible, which may make her current role easier in some respects, she said.

As head of the institute, Tõnnisson said about 80 percent of the budget had to be raised independently. This created constant uncertainty over staff salaries and what would happen if a project failed to secure funding. She had to balance approximately 150 financial sources.

At the Estonian Research Agency, she said, the money is available and the task is to decide how to distribute it as effectively as possible. The role is not directly easier or harder, but it involves more dimensions at the national level.

State research funding in Estonia currently stands at 0.99 percent of gross domestic product, bringing it effectively to the long-awaited one-percent level. At the same time, the Rectors’ Council has warned that funding from European Union structural funds for research could fall sharply during the next funding period, while public-sector research funding could drop below 0.8 percent of GDP by 2028.