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Anastasiya Magazinik: Societal impact of large research infrastructure

Tampere University
LocationOnline via remote connection
11.11.2022 10.00–14.00
Entrance feeFree of charge
Anastasiya Magazinik.
In recent years, interest in the societal impact of large scientific projects has increased. Research is often no longer assessed on scientific impact alone. Governments invest public funds into scientific research with the expectation that economic, medical and other benefits will ensue as increasingly important contributions of science to society. Research has come to be seen as a valuable enterprise in itself, given the value of the knowledge generated, even if its application is not immediate. The scientific community recognises that it is important to demonstrate not only the academic significance of the project, but also its potential merits in the context of regional, national, and international development; technological and economic impacts for industries; the environmental impacts of civil construction and operation, etc.

The societal impact assessment of research infrastructure is becoming essential for scientists for  demonstrating and highlighting the source of economic value generated for society, in addition to its absolute technological or scientific significance. Diverse Big Science centres issue annual impact reports that highlight the positive impacts of science on society, industry, technological progress, human excellence, and education. The number of publications, licensing, start-ups, bilateral cooperation agreements, sustainable development goals and related events are used as indicators to measure the impact of scientific studies.

“Despite the increased interest in the topic, there is  no common methodology or tool for evaluating Big Science impacts yet. The assessment of the costs and benefits of research, development and innovation infrastructures remains extremely difficult and is still discussed as a quite subjective and intuitive approach. Causal factors leading to impact remain speculative, which creates much uncertainty for effective measuring of impact areas,” author of the dissertation Anastasiya Magazinik says.

Thus, this study seeks to obtain data which will help to address the indicated research gaps. Two primary aims of the dissertation are to identify fields of impact and their measures and to explain their interrelations. The research is built on the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) study as a large-scale international project at its early development phase. The project still has a ‘study’ status since CLIC has not been approved for construction.

For a more comprehensive approach to the evaluation of the societal impact of an international project at the development phase, this study was conducted on two research lines: impacts from the perspective of CLIC through internal data-gathering (internal viewpoint) and impacts from the perspectives of industries through an industrial survey (external viewpoint).

The initial data on the CLIC study was collected from CERN’s procurement database and presented about 13,000 procurement orders, 130 collaboration contracts, 180 collaborators, 930 suppliers, 1,800 publications, 296 early career researchers and 54 countries. The second generation of data was more concentrated and performed via an online survey distributed among 152 CLIC suppliers. Feedback was received from 74 hi-tech companies.

First, three impact areas were defined and evaluated from the internal viewpoint, using data collected within the the project: knowledge and human capital formation, and technological output. Contrary to most previous studies, the assessment was done before the construction phase of a scientific infrastructure and focused only on the past development phase experiences. All three impact fields emerged as beneficial already at the study phase of the large-scale project.

Second, from the external viewpoint, with data collected via an online survey of CLIC suppliers, it was found that the industrial partners were able to benefit from the collaboration even at the earlier phase of the fundamental scientific study in terms of increased knowledge, market expansion, marketing image enhancement, economic outcome, improved research and development, and learning about internal services and processes.

“The dissertation thus contributes to two existing contemporary fields of societal impact assessment of fundamental science and the evaluation of research-industry collaboration,” Magazinik points out.

The study shows that a large-scale international study can create benefits already at the very start of the development phase from the internal and external points of view. The developed conceptual model can be used to defend the required public investments in fundamental research and to attract prospective industrial partners.

M.Sc. Anastasiya Magazinik is completing her doctoral studies in the field of industrial engineering and management under the supervision of Professor Saku Mäkinen (Tampere University, Finland) and Dr. Nuria Catalan Lasheras (CERN, Switzerland). The dissertation titled Investigating the Societal Impact of Large Research Infrastructure: A Study on the Compact Linear Collider at CERN will be publicly examined at the Faculty of Management and Business at Tampere University at 12 o’clock on Friday, 11 November 2022. The Opponent is Professor Jason Li-Ying from the Technical University of Denmark while Professor Saku Mäkinen from the Faculty of Management and Business acts as the Custos.

The doctoral dissertation is available online.

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