Courtesy of Malta Tourism Authority
Richard Muscat rarely tunes in to the daily news, but while tending to his children last November, he overheard a TV newscast that stopped him. The prime minister had set aside €800,000 to launch a national research program. For the first time ever, the government allocated money to research. "Thank heavens," Muscat recalls thinking. "They have finally done it."
Muscat, a neuroscientist at the University of Malta, and his colleagues had lobbied the Maltese government since the mid-90s to put research on the national agenda. It had not been an easy task: The Maltese islands, located in the center of the Mediterranean Sea and together hardly half the size of London, make their main income from the sun and the sea: The million tourists per year outnumber the islands' population by a factor of 2.5. Research is still considered an unnecessary extra, funded through the ...
