Discussion: Blah

Are you applying? Irish science is all about the 'translational' aspect at the moment... see Innovation2020 if you are going for an interview. The provost had an interesting piece in the Irish Times a few months ago championing 'pure' research:
http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/nobel-prize-come...

Considering it. For me, 'translational' is usually followed by 'invariant', which is indicative of my chances.

Thanks for the Prendergast article, hadn't seen it.

God, Innovation2020 is depressing. I could probably help with "Undertake a horizon scanning exercise to identify future areas of"
assuming they just mean 'look out for'

[ Oh. 372k results. May I crawl back in my hole?]

The only thing I saw related to fundamental research was a biteen of a page on promotion of "frontier research" which was defined as research into stuff we don't yet understand.

This is the kind of stuff that scares real scientists away.

Is there anyone doing research in areas we do understand? Or I simply missed the point? (I'm tempted to insert a smiley to give the phrase an ambiguous touch, not to look stupid)

Ahoj!

That was my point, or one of them.

Though yes, there are plenty of people repeating discoveries due to varying leves of ignorance.