Institute Calls Canadians Back Home

OTTAWA—In 1985 J. Richard Bond, then associate professor of physics at Stanford University, returned to his alma mater, the University of Toronto, to spend a year at its Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics. Last June, despite the attractive climate and an offer of tenure from Stanford, the 36-year-old Canadian decided to stay in Toronto. The choice is unusual for citizens of a country that has traditionally lost its best scientists to its southern neighbor. The deciding factor was the young, non-profit Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIAR). By making him a Fellow of its cosmology program, the CIAR was able to offer him conditions rarely found in Canada: freedom to pursue his interests without teaching or administrative duties, the opportunity to work with the best people in his field regardless of where they are located, and a salary and benefits competitive with those in leading research centers around the world. The CIAR does this by paying the salaries, travel and other costs of outstanding researchers located at major institutions in Canada and elsewhere and encouraging them to collaborate in what it calls an "institute without walls." They communicate electronically and, when necessary, through formal and informal meetings. "You can try to build a center of excellence in a single institution by spending $1 billion in capital costs and almost $90 million per year to run it," said CIAR Director J. Fraser Mustard. "Or you can make use of existing resources, and spend $14.5 million per year on a center based on network principles." The cosmology program of which Bond is a part will bring together seven outstanding Canadian physicists—four of them based at Princeton, Stanford and the California Institute of Technology—to study the origin and early evolution of the universe. In addition, an-other prominent young cosmologist at Cambridge University has joined the program as an associate. "Up until that time [when the CIAR offer was made] I truly didn't believe that a theorist could do progressive work under the system in Canada," Bond said about his decision to return north. "But the institute was willing to support a program that encouraged collaboration through a communications network. I am able to stay in Toronto and do my research, and I have instant access to other program members. The focus and the approach of the CIAR were tailor-made for my work." Bond is not alone in this reverse brain-drain. Canadian Hector Levesque, 34, left the Silicon Valley Fairchild Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence Research to become a PetroCanada Fellow of the institute in Toronto in 1984. The institute has also persuaded leading non-Canadian scientists either to stay in Canada or to come here: Steven Zucker, an American who is Canada's foremost expert in computer vision, has turned down several attractive offers and will remain at McGill University as a CIAR Fellow; Fred Doolittle, an-other American and an outstanding biochemist at Daihousie University, rejected offers from California universities and, in-stead, chose to head the CIAR program in evolutionary biology; and Carnegie-Mellon artificial intelligence researcher Geoffrey Hinton, a Briton, who this summer will become a CIAR Fellow at the University of Toronto. The Long View The LIAR seeks to focus both financial and intellectual resources on areas of long-term research important to Canada's future. Besides cosmology, artificial intelligence/ robotics, and evolutionary biology, it plans programs in such areas as: the legal sanctions and rewards in Canadian society (whose legal system encompasses both English common law and French civil codes); population health (the factors that determine the health of an entire population and the efficacy of health care systems); technology, change and society; and moral values and Canadian culture. The eight-person staff operates out of a few rooms in a decaying building in downtown Toronto provided by the Ontario government. Director Mustard is a physician and former vice president for health sciences at McMaster University, where he still maintains his own research on the role of platelets in atherosclerosis. The budget of the institute, which receives 70 percent of its funds from corporations, foundations and individuals, has not yet reached Mustard's figure of $14.5 million. The institute currently spends an average of $100,000 on each of its 20 fellows, including salary, travel and expenses, and considerably less on some 25 associates, who belong to the network but are not full-time members. The artificial intelligence network was the first to be created, in 1983, and its 31 researchers are by far the largest network. Each fellow is chosen for a five-year term, with the expectation that support will continue so long as their work remains of high quality. Not all Canadian scientists agree that the institute's concept is the ideal solution. David Suzuki, a geneticist and science popularizer, would prefer to see a single center where scientists can share ideas simply by walking down the hall. "We desperately need a 'Harvard of the North,' "he said. The government has offered up to $7 million in matching funds over the next four years if the institute can obtain private support. Mustard is pleased with the response to date; although Bell Canada, for example, decided its existing research establishments are its top priority, Spar Aerospace Ltd., which manufactures the Canadarm used by the U.S. space shuttle, contributed $750,000. CIAR provides a suitable climate for advanced research in high technology for "a pioneering nation" with a small population, said Chris Trump, Spar's vice president for government and public relations. "And its research effort directly serves our business needs." Spurgeon is a freelance science writer in Ottawa.

Institute Calls Canadians Back Home

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