Letter to ARC re MICS Expert Committee

19 March 2003

Mr Tim Besley AC FTSE
Chairman, ARC
GPO Box 2702
Canberra, ACT 2601, AUSTRALIA

Dear Mr Besley,

ARC MICS Expert Committee

I write with serious concern at the ARC's decision to revise the composition of its Expert Committee on Mathematics, Information and Communication Sciences. The Committee has been re-formulated to include one less mathematician than before. There are now only two mainstream mathematical scientists serving on the Committee, and one statistician.

I know from my own experience on the Physics and Mathematics Sub-Panel that the Expert Committee needs specialised skills from the mathematical sciences if it is to do its job properly. There is no sense in which the Committee's experts in computer science, engineering and cognate disciplines can adequately cover the extremely wide range of fields addressed by grant proposals in pure mathematics, applied mathematics and statistics. They need the advice of at least five or six experts in these fields; there are now only three.

Indeed, this issue is even more important today than it was in the case of the earlier panel system, where each proposal was sent to about six specialist assessors, chosen internationally. Today the proposals are sent to no more than half that number of specialists, and to fill the gap the Expert Committee relies on the generalist views of two Australian readers for each proposal. These readers are only rarely expert on the topics of the proposals on which they report. Therefore, it is more important than ever that the Expert Committee have direct access to quality advice, for careful selection of assessors and readers and for specialist information about the proposals themselves. Instead, the ARC has opted to reduce its access to expert advice in the mathematical sciences.

This should be a matter of grave concern to the ARC, given the deep reliance that modern science and technology place on mathematics. At at time when the US National Science Foundation has given its Division of Mathematical Sciences new status, through substantial funding increases which acknowledge that nation's `vital need for mathematicians and statisticians' (to quote the Division's Director), the Australian Research Council has seen fit to downgrade the importance and attention it gives to mathematics.

Sincerely

Peter Hall Chair, National Committee for Mathematics