'Sterling research' may be lost without funding

A University professor is calling for funding for post-doctoral posts in a bid to keep PhD graduates in Malta.

Kenneth Camilleri, from the Faculty of Engineering's Department of Systems and Control Engineering, said the lack of research posts for those who have just finished their doctorate meant recently graduated PhD students were leaving the island.

"There are several opportunities abroad but we want to keep our researchers in Malta to attract companies to the island," he said.

Prof. Camilleri said that while students could tap into funds to do Master's degrees and doctorates, there were no funds for post-doctoral posts: "We have a gap." This meant that rather than using their skills for research, newly-graduated researchers were either taking lecturing jobs or were employed as scientists or engineers, leaving them no time to do proper research.

"The country is losing what it invested in. These people need to be allowed to spend time in a laboratory and use the skills they have acquired while reading for their PhD to generate knowledge," he said.

Instead, he said, new PhD graduates were either putting their research skills away altogether or limping through them during their free time while holding down a full-time job.

"This is a waste of resources," he said, adding that post-doct-oral placements would give fresh graduates a three to four-year period to concentrate on research.

He said sterling research was being carried out at the University, which should continue after students graduated. A group of students is working on algorithms through which they analyse brain wave patterns by means of an EEG to distinguish brain diseases like Alzheimer's, epilepsy and Parkinson's. This may eventually allow them to predict the diseases in patients who are not yet showing the signs.

Students have also written a computer programme that can transform a two-dimensional sketch scribbled on a piece of paper into a three-dimensional image. This allows the user to get an idea of what the final product they are thinking about will look like when completed.

However, Prof. Camilleri fears all this work could be lost when the students graduated and moved on because they would have been unable to get funding to continue with their research.

"We have to create a local pool of researchers because only then can we attract international companies to set up in Malta," he said.