With a degree (1988) and a PhD (1994) in Biology from the Autonomous University of Madrid, Francisco Saborido Rey began his research career at the IIM in 1989. In 2006 he became a CSIC senior scientist at the same centre. Between 2012 and 2015 he carried out research at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia.
His research focuses on the fisheries ecology of exploited species, such as cod and halibut, as well as coastal and tropical species, with the ultimate aim of advising on the state of resources and on measures to achieve sustainable exploitation.
In 2018 he first became director of the IIM, a position he has now renewed for the next four years.
What encouraged you to stand for re-election as director of the IIM?
Because there is still a lot to do. The work of the management team is demanding and requires great dedication, but over these four years we have achieved important improvements that I sincerely believe have helped to create a better Institute. Before handing over, I would like to see these changes consolidated and to implement others that further improve our centre and the service we provide to society.
The work never ends, but for now we still have the energy and enthusiasm to carry it out.
What would you highlight about the project with which you have just been re-elected?
In connection with the Institute’s vision, I consider it a project with a cross-cutting vocation, aimed at fostering internal and external collaborations so that we can make the most of the deeply multidisciplinary research we do at the IIM.
This programme also seeks to consolidate the work we began during these four years: groundwork that will set the course for the coming years and that translates into new strategic planning, new units and services, major new opportunities to promote Galician marine science and a renewed commitment to society.
How do you assess your four years (2018-2022) as director?
I could not be more satisfied with the effort and intense work carried out by the members of the management team during these years.
What was the most complex moment?
Without a doubt, the hardest months of the pandemic. This tragedy not only meant an unexpected extra effort for all IIM staff, including the management team; it also affected the timetable and the objectives we had set in 2018.
Practically overnight, almost all staff had to stay at home and carry out their usual work with new tools and procedures to which nobody was accustomed. Others had to keep coming to Bouzas because of the nature of their work, dealing with the risk and uncertainty of the first weeks.
The management team, together with the prevention team and many others, worked hard to develop new protocols, obtain PPE, keep staff informed and cohesive, and so on. It was a traumatic experience, but internal surveys suggest that we managed it properly. It also brought some advances, such as the normalisation of remote work and digitalisation.
What would you say was the greatest achievement of the management team during this period?
Fortunately, I can mention several achievements, some larger and others smaller, but all important.
Getting through the worst years of the pandemic with a high level of staff satisfaction is undoubtedly a major achievement, even more so considering that the Institute’s scientific production did not fall in the annual PCOs. This is very remarkable and a merit shared by everyone in our staff.
In the scientific field, I believe the launch of the Complementary Marine Sciences Programme of Galicia is perhaps one of the most exciting projects. It is a real collaboration network among all Galician institutions devoted to marine science, with roots in the darkest days of the Prestige tragedy, when we wrote an open letter from the Institute calling for greater institutional collaboration on the Atlantic front. Almost 20 years had to pass, but now, thanks to NextGeneration funds, the programme is taking its first steps and, as director, I have the honour of leading the scientific coordination together with CETMAR and the University of Vigo.
There is also, of course, the move to a new headquarters at ETEA, which is gradually becoming a reality. At the end of last year we reviewed the projects submitted to the design competition: 38 projects, each better than the last. They were integrative, green and open to the community. We now have to manage construction and the move so that it is as agile as possible, while continuing to fight for more funding from the administrations, since the current funding would force the IIM to split into two sites, with catastrophic consequences for our scientific output.
What was left “halfway” and what must now be started?
We still need to stabilise and consolidate the new structures (services, strategic units and so on) created during this first stage and continue developing other services, such as IT. Only in this way will they be able to keep making life easier for scientific and technical staff so that they can focus on what they do best: research.
During your first term as director, the team included four deputy directorates. What would you highlight about each of them?
In detail, we had the Deputy Directorate for Research, led from beginning to end by researcher Eva Balsa Canto. With her, we worked on implementing a new scientific strategy and restructuring IIM research and innovation to make the most of the Institute’s high multidisciplinarity. Our scientific work is now organised around three large Transversal Research and Innovation Plans, which flexibly structure work across nine lines and sectors. This conceptualisation will help foster collaborations among groups and departments, two structures that we considered too rigid and compartmentalised. In this area, the role of internationalisation and transfer, the creation of IACIC, and increasing support for researchers applying to competitive funding programmes such as ERC grants should also be highlighted.
We also had the Deputy Directorate for Organisation, led first by Miguel Gil Coto and later by José M. Fernández Babarro. Its work strengthened the IIM’s institutional connections, especially with the University of Vigo, and improved the coordination and management of our shared infrastructures and research and innovation resources through the creation of the new Scientific-Technical Support Unit (UACT).
The Deputy Directorate for Scientific Culture, created for the first time under this management and with few equivalents in other centres, was led by researcher Xosé (Pepe) Pintado Valverde. Its most notable achievement was the creation of the Scientific Culture and Innovation Unit (UCC+I) and its accreditation this year by FECYT. Together with IACIC, the UCC+I strengthened our image and connection with the outside world. It professionalised the Institute’s long-standing communication and outreach work, adding an improved digital presence, including a new website, and participation in competitive European projects, conferences and Ocean Literacy networks such as the EU4Ocean Platform.
The Institute’s work must not only be communicated; we must also be able to listen to the community around us and understand the real impact that our work has on society. We now have the potential to do this and are already working on it, for example through a specific work plan within the Marine Sciences Programme.
Finally, I want to highlight in particular the work of Jesús (Suso) Mirón as technical deputy director. We discontinued that position so that Suso could focus on Occupational Risk Prevention, which he coordinated throughout the pandemic together with Carmen Piñeiro and other staff members. His good work means that today Suso is the prevention delegate for the whole CSIC Northwest from his office at the IIM.
The new organisation chart of the management team includes changes. Why this design?
Because it works, and very well. The four deputy directorates that accompanied me in the previous stage were essential to everything that was done, because they define responsibilities and allow the rest of the team to reduce their workload.
The changes in name are intended to be more faithful and transparent about what each position does.
The new Deputy Directorate for Scientific Strategy and Transfer will continue the work of the former Deputy Directorate for Research, now led by researcher Marta López Cabo. The Deputy Directorate for Scientific Culture will continue, with its deputy director, the work already begun to strengthen our social impact.
The two new associate deputy directorates, with José M. Fernández Babarro heading Institutional Organisation and Sonia Dios Vidal heading Infrastructure and Sustainability, seek to distribute the workload at a key moment for the IIM. On the one hand, the Marine Sciences Plan will strengthen relations with other institutions; on the other, we must continue digitalisation and the improvement of work spaces, making them more sustainable and fair, while managing the construction of and move to a new headquarters.
Both responsibilities involve a high workload that we considered best to share.
Another important element of this new stage is that we will work to create a true External Scientific Advisory Committee to assess our trajectory, our ability to be a centre of excellence and to advise us on our scientific strategy.
What message would you like to send in this new stage to your team and to all IIM staff?
I would like to ask them to keep the enthusiasm they have shown so far for the work we do. Sometimes our work can be hard and unstable, but even so we work at one of Europe’s best research centres and we have very important and exciting projects ahead of us. These will allow us to grow and evolve, improve the conditions in which we work and continue doing cutting-edge marine science, always with a public-service vocation.
I would also like to convey that much of the evolution in which the management team trusts will require collaboration from the CSIC presidency; we cannot do it alone. After the new president’s visit to our centre in August, our impressions are very good and we trust the new presidency team, but our staff and our science need concrete and real action.
I would highlight two priority actions. First, it is urgent to improve the situation of IIM staff, and of the whole Council. We have one of the lowest staff allocations of all research centres, especially among technical research and management staff, who also suffer from the lack of a career path that recognises their contribution to science with promotion and stability. In the context of the enormous and often unjustified bureaucracy we face every day, we must help these people escape stagnation and keep them motivated and enthusiastic if we do not want to fall behind. Science is teamwork.
I would also ask for support and funding for a strategic project for the CSIC and for Galicia: the Marine Scientific-Technological Campus and, within it, the new IIM headquarters. We need a substantial increase in economic resources for this project. We need money, quite simply, to build facilities that can accommodate all our staff and allow us to keep growing with a view to the future.
With the current funds, we can only aspire to increase our surface area by 30%. The current building in Bouzas was designed for 150 people and we now have around 200 staff members. This would force us to maintain two sites, one in Bouzas and another in Ríos, which, as I mentioned, would have a very negative effect on everything we can contribute to marine science and to the public.