We are Italian EMBO members who wish to bring to the attention of the Italian government  the extreme discomfort  generated by the  persistently and abysmally low research funding. As recently pointed out by Parisi, the government’s latest 3-year research allocation of €93 million (after 3 years of no funding!) is grossly inadequate (Nature 530, 33; 2016) -- 4,431 grant applications have already been submitted for this year. By contrast, it  also  plans  to invest €150 million annually for the next 10 years in a Human Technopole  (HT) project. HT will be headed by the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) of Genoa – an Institution ruled by private law that has received  €100 million/year over the past 12 years: only about half of them has been spent so far, according to public information. The initiation of the  IIT-HT project and its operation,  including selection of its research topics have  not abided by international standards of transparency for recipients of large sums of public funding.

While we do not question the HT project per se, we  are extremely worried  by the lack of transparency in its initiation and implementation.  The Italian scientific community  believes it necessary that the government  makes it a priority to establish an adequately funded, self-governing Agency for Research, along the lines of the UK Medical Research Council or Germany’s Max Planck Society. Such an Agency would have openly transparent jurisdiction over the call, selection and funding of bottom-up country’s research proposals, as well and the establishment of new research centres, including the choice and funding of research topics. Accordingly, it would evaluate the proposed HT project, make it spending accountable and oversee its implementation. The Agency’s activities should themselves be monitored by prestigious and efficient international scientific organizations. 

Umberto Bertazzoni, Martino Bolognesi, Ernesto Carafoli, Paolo Costantino, Antonello Covacci, Barbara Ensoli, Guido Grandi, Maurizio Iaccarino, Alberto Luini, Antonio Malgaroli, Cesare Montecucco, Lorenzo Moretta, Maria Grazia Pizza, Paolo Plevani, Carola Ponzetto