New and strengthened research priorities post-pandemic

COVID-19 has led to a realignment of research spending priorities as governments announce future research funding. The pandemic has underlined the importance of investing in research and development to prepare for pandemic shocks and for increasing health and economic resilience.

Adjustments in research priorities and future preparedness for pandemics and health emergencies have been the hallmark of budget planning in several Asian countries in recent months, alongside stepping up digitisation – spotlighted by a move to online teaching and online research collaboration.

South Korea, in a government announcement in January, said it would spend KRW41.9 billion (US$37 million) to develop treatments and vaccines against new infections as part of a KRW5.8 trillion (US$5.2 billion) science and ICT budget for this year – a 12% rise on 2020 with a focus on basic research, as well as new technologies such as artificial intelligence to drive its innovation-led economy.

Lessons were already learned from previous epidemics, notably SARS, and its response was also “the result of strenuous long-term investments in basic research”.

“The strong competitiveness of the manufacturing sector in Korea has also led to a successful response to the pandemic,” said Park Hyun-Wook, vice president for research at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), pointing to South Korea’s relative success in early control of the pandemic.

Taiwan is in the enviable position of not having to shut down its economy as it kept coronavirus well under control in 2020. Its economy expanded 2.98% in 2020 – among the fastest growing in Asia during the pandemic year – mainly propelled by its pole position in global manufacturing and research of semiconductors, which are the computer chips required for digital devices.

Universities in Taiwan continued with in-person classes, and saw minimal research disruption in 2020, although this February the beginning of the spring term was postponed by two weeks as a precaution. Experts now expect some adjustment in research priorities in the coming year even if government research funding does not rise.

In December, Singapore announced an increase in spending for its next five-year plan for Research, Innovation and Enterprise, known as RIE2025, to SG$25 billion (US$18.75 billion) over five years, compared to SG$19 billion (US$14.25 billion) for the previous five-year plan from 2016-20, known as RIE2020.

“When the prime minister announced the funding, it was a 30% increase to SG$25 billion over five years. So that is a very significant increase. The downstream effect would be that universities like us would have more research funding,” said the president of the National University of Singapore (NUS), Tan Eng Chye.

“The government is very heartened by the responses from the research ecosystem [in Singapore] to COVID and this is a good indication to the government that well-sustained investment in research and innovation is important,” Tan told University World News.

Disruption of research and new pandemic-related initiatives

There had been some research disruption including lab closures at NUS last year, “but these have now reopened and for the most part researchers have caught up with the help of an extra half year of funding,” said Tan.

At NUS some researchers had moved to work on COVID-related research alongside their own research, including on optimising testing kits, “and this is continuing, because we expect the fight [against COVID] to be more long term,” Tan said. “They still continue with their current research, or they’re doing both, and we have given them extra resources from our own [university] funds.”

Chen Ming-Syan, executive vice president at National Taiwan University (NTU), said: “The government supported us with extra funding to study issues related to this pandemic.”

The university combined with National Taiwan University Hospital established the NTU Research Center for Epidemic Prevention Science, set up last year with a research budget of some US$3 million a year.

“We have a new environment, new equipment and new research topics, all the activities are new,” explained Chen. But in addition, “to address issues from the global pandemic, NTU quickly integrated cross-disciplinary research activities, mostly supported by extra funding from the Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan.”

KAIST’s Park in South Korea said: “We haven’t seen any big changes in our research portfolio since the outbreak of the pandemic, although we have noted a slight decrease in short-term projects with industries.”

However, the institution launched the ‘KAIST New Deal R&D initiative’ in May with new government funding of KRW30 billion (US$27 million) for 2020-22.

Park described the initiative as aiming to create “epidemic-mitigating mobile clinic module systems covering everything from prevention to diagnosis to treatment”. The scheme involves more than 50 professors of medical and biological sciences, engineering and industrial design focusing on antivirus technologies, infectious disease-related big data management and ‘non-contact service platforms’.

The initiative has already produced innovations such as an inflatable ICU (intensive care unit) as an answer to COVID-19 ICU bed shortages.

Longer-term R&D areas of focus

One of the themes of Singapore’s RIE2025 is dealing with new epidemics that may emerge in the future, while funding for basic research will be boosted to power the country’s knowledge and innovation-based economy and stay ahead in globally competitive advanced research.

“About one-third of the SG$25 billion [RIE2025 money] is for research funding and talent development for universities and this includes PhD students and research fellows – the critical manpower that is required for research,” said Tan from NUS.

“We will be hiring quite aggressively because we should position ourselves, especially for the many [globally competitive] research areas,” he said. These include artificial intelligence and quantum technologies.

These will mean expansion, but not necessarily changes, in research direction. “RIE2025 involved more than two years of consultation with the universities and the research ecosystem, starting back in 2018, so it actually aligns with what we have been preparing over the last two years at NUS,” Tan explained.

Nonetheless, there will be more focus on research issues such as pandemic preparedness and response.

“There were various [response] issues, starting with [having] enough chemicals to test for COVID-19, enough swabs to be used for testing, and whether our innovations are agile enough and fast enough from research to market. How can we actually enhance it?” said Tan.

An additional area of focus is regional health surveillance. “It cannot be Singapore alone. It has to be in the context of Southeast Asia and how we reinforce the current network within Southeast Asia to ensure that, regionally, we have very good surveillance systems for pandemic infectious diseases.”

Another major pillar of RIE2025 is supply chain resilience and transformation because of its impact on Singaporean economy which, overall, took a big hit from the pandemic.

“Because of the restrictions on travel and on transportation as a result of COVID we have seen supply chains disrupted. Supply chains are undergoing transformation,” Tan said. “Research on how we can mitigate sudden disruptions is important simply because Singapore is a key node in the global supply chain network,” he said, referring to Singapore’s export-led economy.

“Supply chain is not just food or supply of materials, it also involves supply of parts” assembled from around the world, so this has a lot of impact on trade,” he added.

Under RIE2020, as well as RIE2025, around 15% of the funds – around SG$4 billion (US$3 billion) is set aside for white space research.

“The reason why it’s ‘white space’ is that the area is not yet defined. But because the environment can change so quickly, in the next five years it allows a pot of money to enable research ecosystems to reposition strategically,” Tan explains. In the past five years such programmes included artificial intelligence (AI), quantum engineering and quantum applications.

“Whatever resources you put in, it is a delicate balance to find the appropriate proportion for blue sky research versus mission-oriented research, and countries are always having to grapple with that,” said Tan.

South Korea’s R&D focus

Being better prepared for flu-like epidemics since the 2003 SARS outbreak in Asia helped South Korea in the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, with strong testing and control measures keeping case numbers low last year. But KAIST’s Park said: “There has been a dire need and strong interest in the fields of antivirus research, diagnosis, treatment and the prevention of epidemics, and research funding for these fields has increased.

“We believe that non-contact technologies such as virtual reality and visual conferencing will also continue to attract more funding,” he said, noting the switch to online teaching and meetings during the pandemic.

“At KAIST, we are interested in several flagship research areas: mobility, new materials, AI, and bio-medicine. All these forward-looking research topics are closely combined with deep-learning-powered AI technologies and we are investing heavily in these areas.

“We expect that robotics and new mobility made of new nano-materials, and precise bio-medicine powered by machine learning will improve our quality of life. New mobility and robotics can help us communicate with each other and conduct tasks in a non-contact environment,” he said.

But Park warned that a heavy concentration on pandemic-related research could affect other areas of research. “I am concerned that the heavy investments in the field of infectious diseases in the wake of the pandemic will affect long-term and balanced R&D policy plans. I am also afraid that uncertainties on the future will lead to fewer investments in basic research and technology,” he said.

Taiwan R&D

Taiwan’s spending on basic research declined prior to the pandemic, dropping by 3.6% in 2018-19 compared to previous year, according to figures released last year. This was mainly due to budget cuts in government spending, as well as in higher education funding.

But Taiwan’s research spending as a proportion of GDP is high by international standards, at around 3.36% of total GDP or over US$20 billion annually spent on R&D, behind top performer South Korea at 4.9% of GDP. Corporate spending on research makes up about 80% of the total.

However, last year Premier Su Tseng-chang said Taiwan’s control of coronavirus and ability to maintain economic growth was a product of Taiwan’s epidemic prevention which he said was “built on big data and the effective application of technology”.

In April the government announced a TWD$4 billion (US$144 million) plan for a new disease prevention centre in Taipei to focus on research, development and testing of vaccines.

NTU’s Chen said despite COVID’s limited impact on university life and research – Taiwan’s universities and labs never had to shut down – “even if we get back to normal this year or a year later, it will be a new normal, not as it was before the pandemic. It makes sense to look ahead to the new environment and adjust our research topics at this moment.”

NTU has set up some new research centres funded by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science and Technology, which reflect the university’s own research strengths.

They include centres for Genomic and Precision Medicine, Precision Population Health Science, Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Robotics, Green Materials Science and Technology, and Integrative Science for Sustainability.

Chen added: “In my opinion, the pandemic has moved our progress on digitalisation for human activities forward by 30 years all at once. New emerging areas include those needed for automation during the pandemic, such as AI, computer vision, natural language processing, and also medical-related research and technology.”

The government, for example is creating a cabinet level department of digital development, speeded up by the pandemic.