6th RISG Biennial Research and Innovation Dialogue 2021

On 11 June 2021, Universities South Africa’s (USAf) Research and Innovation Strategy Group (RISG) held its 6th Biennial Research and Innovation Dialogue. These events, assembling local and international stakeholders in the research and innovation arena to deliberate on matters of mutual concern and interest, have proven to be an invaluable opportunity for rigorous discussions and considerations for the future of the higher education research enterprise. 

Due to the global CoViD-19 pandemic, the 6th chapter, initially due in 2020, was moved to 2021 and rendered exclusively virtual. 

The two thematic areas explored were:

• CoViD-19 Impact on Research and Postgraduate Studies; and
• Ethical research and integrity.

Keynote speakers pointed out that even though CoVID-19 had upended life as the world had known it before 2020, the pandemic had yielded significant benefits to science and humanity while also identifying loose ends that need to be tightened, if humanity was to continue building on the legacy created by the pandemic.

For one, CoViD-19 had set new records of research speed. Whereas it had taken scientists a full two years before they could identify the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) since it had broken out in the world, it took researchers only 11 days to identify the CoViD-19 virus after it was first discovered on 31 December 2019. Furthermore, it had taken scientists a full seven years to develop the HIV rapid test, compared to the four months they took to develop the first rapid test of CoViD-19. Finally, within 11 months of CoViD-19 arrival, the world had developed a vaccine, whereas no HIV vaccine was in sight, over 20 years after it was discovered.

Similarly, CoViD-19 research had outperformed numerous scientific investigations which yielded vaccines against measles (10 years), hepatitis (14 years) and typhoid (105 years).

On the downside, CoViD-19 had demonstrated a need all over the world, for countries to strengthen their pandemic preparedness and response capacities.  Countries needed to develop capacities in high-level teams of epidemiologists, virologists, mathematical modellers, infectious disease specialists, behavioural scientists and academic researchers. This is where universities came in, as producers of human capital.

While pandemic preparedness needed to integrate health surveillance systems, South Africa, like other countries of the world, needed to boost its biotechnological capability for diagnosis, prevention, and treatment.

Delegates conceded that steering institutions into the post-CoViD-19 future would require collaboration among institutions and research partnerships, especially with civil society, if universities were to successfully advance humanity. South Africa’s socio-economic challenges rendered it even more imperative to work together in finding alternative funding solutions.

On Ethical Research, emphasis was made on science as a public good; on the intrinsic right of society to share in the knowledge and information outcomes of research and on the fundamental responsibility of researchers in conducting research. Emphasis was made on the fundamental responsibility of researchers to pursue and report the truth as they saw it; responsibility for how research is conducted, in deciding how to use other people’s data, how to disseminate knowledge, and to respect the authority of professional codes in specific disciplines.