Japan builds near $700M fund to lure foreign academic talent | Hacker News Reader

Japan builds near $700M fund to lure foreign academic talent

theregister.com

28 pointsrntn10 comments

I see this thing in the EU lately too. I hate it, how about a fund to spend on the local academic talent? Like, should the way to get a decent salary as an European academic in Europe be to get a job in the US so they can be headhunted with earmarked money for "foreign talent" a couple of years later?

Isn't the problem they're trying to fix that there isn't enough local academic talent (because they chronically under-spent in the past)?

Are they trying to jump start and gain momentum?

They already have the local academic talent, and they're not looking to move away. Poaching US academics who are left in the lurch by the current administration's policies is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Japan to achieve research dominance in economically and geopolitically important fields like semiconductors, defense, and biotechnology.

Japan learned this lesson the hard way when they lost their semiconductor researchers to Taiwan, Korea, and the US in the early 90s. The US's misplay has given them a chance at redemption.

Presumably they already spend money on local academic talent? This is an opportunistic investment because the US government is defunding and politicizing academia.

The Japanese initiative will do better than the European one - Japan has quietly become a major white collar destination for Korean and Chinese nationals after COVID, especially in fields like Materials Science which tend to have much stronger East Asian representation than other fields.

METI also has a stronger muscle around R&D promotion and commercialization compared to similar initiatives across Europe with come across as overly bureaucratic with leaders without domain experience.

That said, in the medium term it's still difficult to compete with the amount of private capital and grants for R&D (and the associated commercialization capabilities) in the US, but Japan is rebuilding that muscle.

I think European leaders need to think deep down about whether they are EU first or nation first - the inability for EU and national initiatives in R&D to take off is due to this grey area that exists.

And if I'm being honest - a mid tier European univeristy like Aix-Marseilles or Bath just can't compete with an imperial university like Tohoku University.

The EU announced a $500 million fund for this a few weeks ago. A couple of weeks ago Microsoft announced a $400 million investment in cloud computing here in Switzerland. Shows how ineffective $500 million is going to be...

Why? $500M could pay 1000 scientists/academics (up to) a $50k pay-bump for 10 years each. Even if 50% would be lost to "administrative overhead", $25k over the usual EU market rate (which is lower than US) per year per scientist might entice many to move.

I don't know how this program would be structured, but imo this program is not doomed to fail due to underfinancing - of course this being an EU program it surely has other issues.

It's too little.

Even countries like India are offering $50K-100K lab seed grants for western educated academics from the diaspora in high impact fields to take tenure track roles at major institutes, while offering free housing (as in an actual house) and a $15-30k salary depending on experience.

These EU programs are pennywise and pound foolish, and fail to incorporate private sector players or partnerships, and the lack of English fluency and established communities from a number of overrepresented countries in STEM makes the EU not as enticing.

You may as well go to America and earn the top dollar, or go to Australia, Japan, or Korea where you will earn a Western European salary but US level grants and have added cultural competency.

How do the EU/Indian programs compare, eg in monetary outlay? It's hard to find numbers.

The Indian programs are tied to other larger initiatives by the Indian government so they are obfuscated.

For example, for semiconductors and chip design, a portion of the semiconductor subsidy that the Indian government is giving is earmarked for university R&D, and individual INIs [0] (top public Indian STEM universities) are given matching grants (around $50K) that are earmarked as lab seed funding with an additional $50K dollar-for-dollar match when creating a lab with a private sector partner (and plenty of EU domiciled firms like NXP and Infineon participate in this), so the right PI can make an NXP branded lab with $150k in seed capital and an in-built commercialization pipeline.

It's a similar story for Battery Tech, Drones, and Biopharma as well.

On top of that, most top researchers will choose to work in a private sector R&D group like Microsoft Research India or Samsung Research India which pay EU level salaries, give US level backing for internal research, and have none of the academic politics.

And this is just 1 (large) country. Other countries like China, South Korea, Japan, Australia, Singapore, etc have equally if not more lucrative programs to attract diaspora researchers. European initiatives just don't compare when even most Indian postdocs at programs like the Plack Institutes choose to take tenure track positions back in India and even mid-tier IITs, NITs, IISERs, AIIMSes, NIPERs, and IIITs are attracting junior faculty with PhDs and post-docs from programs like Purdue, UCLA, UW, UIUC, Yale, etc.

On top of that, major diaspora American VC funds like Foundation Capital and Sequoia/PeakXV are running their own versions of YC targeting grads from these programs to build in both India and the US.

And this is nothing compared to initiatives that the Chinese government have been running to attract Chinese diaspora academics, and more establish programs created by the Japanese and Australians that have operated since the 1970s.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutes_of_National_Importa...

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