Wednesday the 20^th of June 2001 saw the opening of the Dublin City University Symposium on Scientific Effectiveness. The Inaugural lecture was given by Dr Baruch Blumberg, Nobel Prizewinner, and current Director of the NASA Astro-biological Research Institute.

Dr Blumbergs' talk on "Effective scientific research for new discovery: contributions from the world of organisation" attracted interest from scientific researchers, research policy makers and academic administrators, as well as management and organisational scientists.

Dr Blumbergs' talk focused on his considerable experiences of scientific management from his time in the FOX CHASE Cancer Research Centre in Philadelphia and his current involvement as Director of the NASA Astrobiological Research Institute.

The symposium proper was held over the following three days, and was attended by invited speakers from Holland, America, New Zealand, and Ireland. Speakers included:

• John Hurley Dublin City University, Ireland;
• ECM. Noyons Leiden Univerity, Netherlands;
• VS. Mouly University of Auckland, New Zealand;
• J. Sankaran University of Auckland, New Zealand;
• JC Ryan Dublin City University, Ireland;
• Rob Root-Bernstein MSU
• HF. Moed Leiden Univerity, Netherlands;
• S.Connelly University of Oklahoma
• MD. Mumford University of Oklahoma, US; and
• B. Blumberg, NASA, AMES, US.

This invited symposium focused the attention of the multidisciplinary group on the issue of scientific effectiveness and the organisational factors relating to it. The Symposium was a great success, and arising the individual presentations which are in chapter form, a book will be published which will be called "Organisational factors in Scientific Effectiveness" with Professor John Hurley of Dublin City University Business School as editor.

The symposium also saw the formation of an international network of researchers in this area of scientific effectiveness, which will continue the advancement of research and development in this area and help in the establishment of joint funded projects on this topic in the future.

The photograph shows Professor John Hurley making a presentation to Dr Blumberg.