An issue of Nature of a couple of months ago in its page on authors featured a senior lecturer at the University of Malta. It is not often that we witness a Maltese academic working in Malta publishing a research contribution in Nature.
In fact Nature, in quantifying Malta, states that one is the number of authors working in Malta to publish original research in Nature over the past year (Nature volume 440/2, March 2006). In its numerical perspective on Nature authors, 201 is the number of visits to Nature online that have come from Malta in a month, which means it is 0.01% of all visits.
The senior lecturer featured is Dr Rena Balzan, who is described as spending a good part of each day teaching medical genetics. The rest of her time is spent doing research. Nature describes Balzan as having a small lab with one post-graduate student.
She works on mitochondrial targeting, and is currently interested in apoptosis in yeast. Dr Balzan states: "I do the kind of work I do out of love for the subject and scientific research."
Although in its new approach to the RTDI the Malta Council for Science and Technology is this year emphasising the importance of research in medical genetics Dr Balzan did not get her support for her research through RTDI since not enough funds were available to enable the RTDI Committee to make an award to Dr Balzan.
So how did Dr Balzan come to be featured as an author in such a prestigious scientific journal as Nature? The journal itself in its feature on Quantified Malta gives us the answer. It states that when Jerry Kaplan, a pathology professor at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City came across Balzan's work, he invited her to work with his group on using yeast to study iron metabolism.
The partnership - Dr Balzan's first outside Europe - has been very successful. The partnership led to the publication of the outstanding original research paper establishing mitoferrin as essential for erythroid iron assimilation.
The Zebra fish was used in the research as a powerful model system to study vertebrate development and heritable diseases in humans in particular haematological disorders. In this case the data produced by the group of which Dr Balzan forms part showed that mitoferrin functions as the principal mitochondrial iron importer essential for haem biosynthesis in vertebrate erythroblasts.
Dr Balzan's achievement is an example of how love of science can put Malta on the international research map. Dr Balzan was mentored, among others, by our outstanding Maltese researcher Professor William Bannister. It is indeed a pity, probably unforgivable and shameful, that a small island as ours, which needs to promote research, neglects to recognise such a prominent research worker as Professor Emeritus Bannister.
Professor Bannister does pay the occasional visit to the University. But is it not possible that we make better use of the unique, indisputable talents of such a Maltese scientist?
Dr Balzan makes a unique contribution to basic scientific research at our university. However if one had only to look at the Research Seminars Programme organised by the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery jointly with the Faculty of Science in the past four months one would realise the considerable amount at scientific work that is going on.
Dr Adriana Vella discussed 'Conservation of biology research tools: from field surveys to molecular genetics'; Claire Shoemake is establishing correlation tools between in vitro and in silico studies for ligand receptor affinity using oestrogen and androgen receptors as case studies, research work that should bring together the IT and pharmaceutical areas; Joseph Borg is working on biochemical research using haemoglobin F1 Malta as a model for globin gene expression; Godwin Sammut is working on a forensic science aspect of international interest by characterising ecstasy using ICP/MS; and Dr Claire Baluci has presented her original research on the fauna of local sandy beaches.
These are but a few of the many scientific researchers working at our university. One must not forget the amount of outstanding research carried out in the areas of arts, engineering, architecture and education, among others. There is also the important aspect of teaching, which together with research is the raison d'être of the existence of the university.
But even in this area our university academics have made a mark. Members of the Faculty of Education have a significant number of publications, which have made their mark on the international scene. But even in the science-based area one can mention that a second edition of the book, edited by Dr Lilian Azzopardi, senior lecturer at the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, published by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in the UK, is in the pipeline.
This publication is now considered a benchmark for those preparing for pre-registration examination in the UK and is established in other European countries. A prominent Italian academic, Professor Giorgio Tortorella, has joined the contributors to Dr Azzopardi's book, in addition to the other Maltese and UK professors.
It is hoped that the government will in its next Budget, which as is understood is being prepared in its skeleton form at this time, will ensure that such contributions to science so essential to the development of our university will be recognised.
For although the love for science and teaching, as exemplified by Dr Balzan, could perform miracles by making Malta one of the 11 countries in which authors publishing original research in that particular week's Nature live and work, the situation is far from satisfactory. In addition to this love, scientific research requires substantial financial backing and the support of research assistants.