ESF Hopes to Be Voice of European Science

Abstract

For the past 24 years, the European Science Foundation (ESF) has brought together disparate groups of researchers across the continent with conferences and modest funding programs, but by the early 1990s, its purely science-led, bottom-up approach had begun to clash with the more directed approach of some of its research agency funders. So ESF has started to reinvent itself. Next week, ESF officials will put forward a new 4-year plan, hoping to carve out a niche for itself in supporting scientific cooperation in areas of basic research that complement the European Union's Framework program, and also to increase its visibility--and its clout--in European science policy.