Abbott attack on Australian Science

An award-winning evolutionary biologist has turned down the most prestigious research fellowship for young scientists in the country in frustration at funding cuts.

Dr Danielle Edwards specialises in reptiles and researches how genetic diversity is affected by factors like the environment.

She said her work fed into important questions around what species could survive extinction and why.

"I work on studying the forces of the environment that shape the evolution of a rage of different reptiles and amphibians," she said.

"Understanding how diversity is generated across the landscape is going to be important for keeping that diversity in the face of climate change and ongoing extinction."

For the past four years Dr Edwards has been applying for research positions in Australia, but for most of that time she has only been able to get work in the United States.

Recently she was invited to apply for a position at the CSIRO, but before the interviewing process had concluded the job itself was gone.

"When the Abbott Government came in and put a freeze on CSIRO hiring, that search was subsequently cancelled. I was no longer able to apply," she said.

Now Dr Edwards has been offered a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) by the Australian Research Council, a hugely competitive award worth $385,000.

But Dr Edwards has chosen to turn it down.

She said the most recent round of funding cuts to science and the prospect of university fee deregulation meant she saw no future in Australian science.

"The prospect of getting a more permanent position outside the three-year fellowship didn't look good given my struggles with trying to find a position. Declining funding rates were also a notion," she said.

"Given that most of the research in Australia - if you're a research scientist - is undertaken by PhD students, the idea that PhD students would have to pay their fees would just mean that you're unable to get people in the lab to do what needed to be done."

Dr Edwards said optimism for the future was not great for people who wanted to work in academia and science in Australia. 

"The lack of government support that seems to be continuing and getting worse with the closure of CSIRO positions all over the place in general, I think, it's going to be really hard for Australian scientists to produce world-class research going into the future," she said.