Author: Vice-Chancellor’s Blog (Page 20 of 24)

Yesterday was a very interesting day at work. In the morning, we discussed politics with Stefan Löfven, the leader of the Social Democratic party, Ardalan Shekarabi, Member of Parliament and Vivianne Macdisi, County Commissioner. They sought to discuss the university’s role in the knowledge region of Uppsala, how does the university spur innovations and new technologies in the sector of life sciences, and how do we collaborate with business and society? We raised questions about education, internationalization, resource allocation and evaluation methods, among other things. The time was limited, as it often is when many have much to say, and the meeting ended with the call to continue at a future meeting.

We then met the Indian ambassador Banashri Bose Harrison at the inauguration ceremony of a bust of Rabindranath Tagore at the English Park campus. Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913, and was the first non- European who was awarded the prize. During the afternoon there were three lectures about his life and his relationship with Sweden organized by the Forum for South Asian Studies at the Department of Linguistics and Philology.

The rest of the week has many things to offer, for example the Include-conference on Thursday and a visit by the university management from Lund University on Friday. An exciting and eventful week, just as it should be early in May!

Banashri Bose Harrison and Eva Åkesson.

Now we have celebrated the arrival of the spring in Uppsala, even though the spring weather temporarily receded (but the snow seems to melt away quickly). It was an eventful day with many activities on the agenda; student floats running the Fyris River, herring lunch, the donning of the caps at Carolina Rediviva, visits to several student clubs and dinner at Uppsala Castle. In the evening we listened to Curator curatorum Kristina Melin’s spring speech.

Today, on May 1, it is time for spring dinners at different nations. We wish you all a happy spring!

Yesterday a well-attended alumni lecture was organized with Petra Einarsson, last year’s “Alumnus of the Year”at Uppsala University. Petra Einarsson is CEO of Sandvik Materials Technology, and talked on the topic “You can do so much more than you think”. It was an inspiring lecture on several aspects of leadership, with many wise thoughts and personal views.

Learn more about our alumni network.

Petra Einarsson, Eva Åkesson and Arne Sjöblom. Photo: Mikael Wallerstedt.

Yesterday SciLifeLab’s new building “Navet” (i.e. “the Hub”) was inaugurated at Uppsala University. The project was initiated in May 2012, and now the new premises are ready for SciLifeLab’s operations at BMC, Uppsala Biomedical Center. The idea is that the new building should be a creative venue that will inspire and facilitate exchanges between researchers in different disciplines. Several research groups and staff at SciLifeLab have moved their operations to Navet, and there is plenty of space for visiting scholars from other universities.

At the well-attended opening ceremony the Minister of Education Jan Björklund was among the speakers, as well as the Co-director of SciLifeLab, Kerstin Lindblad-Toh. The opening ceremony ended with a tying of two green strings together to symbolize the coming together and creating bonds, which is at the core of SciLifeLab.

From left: Kerstin Lindblad-Toh, Jan Björklund, Eva Åkesson.

It is time for the weekend again and we have put another week behind us. Spring had to step back for a while, but will soon be back. This week we have had a meeting with the Management Council, where the issue of infrastructure took a large part of the meeting. We will take a greater responsibility in this matter going forward. Each higher education institution is to identify research infrastructure that can be considered of national interest from their own areas of strength. Suggested research infrastructure may be existing, under construction or planned. Joseph Nordgren has been instructed by the Vice-Chancellor to work with the infrastructure issues at Uppsala University in the past year, and he will lead the process of developing our priorities in consultation with the departments.

Furthermore, the Ministry of Education and Research has been in contact with the Swedish higher education institutions regarding increased student capacity for 2015. This will primarily lead to more places on the degree programmes for teachers, specialist nurses and midwives. We expect to receive further information on this subject early next week.

Our meetings and conversations continue, both individually and in groups. We met about 50 of our department heads last Wednesday, and the next scheduled department head meeting is on 15 October . Next week we have among other things a visit to the Department of Physics and Astronomy on the agenda.

Now we wish you all a great weekend!

There are always a number of ongoing meetings of all sorts at our university. Today we had the EU Commissioner László Andor on a flying visit, invited by Joakim Palme at the Department of Political Science. Commissioner Andor, responsible for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, has in the past year gone on the offensive against the growing social imbalances within the EU that followed the global financial crisis. He has launched a strategy for action that in different ways could strengthen the social dimension of the European Union.

His visit to Uppsala University began with a breakfast meeting with the Deputy Vice-Chancellor and a dozen researchers and students with an interest in EU affairs. After a brief tour of the Museum Gustanavium, Andor held a speech entitled ‘The Social Dimension of the Internal Market’.

Yesterday we had a visit from the President of the Moldovan Parliament, Igor Corman. He was here with a delegation of Members of Parliament at the invitation of the Speaker of the Swedish Parliament, Per Westerberg, and visited the Ångström Laboratory and Uppsala Innovation Center.

At Ångström, professor Kristina Edström presented our center for battery research, and showed our visitors the current research on lithium batteries and fuel cells. Professor Peter Lindblad presented the section of Biomimetics, and talked about our research on renewable energy.

Anders Malmberg and Igor Corman.

Peter Lindblad at the Ångström Laboratory.

This week it became known that three prominent researchers at Uppsala University were awarded grants through the Research Council’s new program ‘Grants for Distinguished Professors’. Materials physicist Olle Eriksson, the genome researcher Kerstin Lindblad-Toh and the evolutionary biologist Hans Ellegren are to receive grants of approximately 5 million euros per year for a ten year period. The purpose of this initiative is to give the best researchers in Sweden the possibilities to concentrate on their research. They should be given opportunities to plan ahead and take risks – and to achieve innovative research. It is very gratifying to see that researchers at Uppsala University received as much as three of the nine appropriations in this special initiative.

We have also greeted another eminent scientist at Uppsala University this week, namely Robert Cardiff who gave this year’s Göran Gustafsson Lecture. It was a well-attended lecture under the theme “Redesigning the Foundation for Clinical Research”.

Last Thursday we were also informed about the government’s new initiative for higher education. Higher education in Sweden will expand its student capacity by 10,000 places, where most of the new places will be added in various types of teacher education programmes. The expansion will take place gradually, and the government will come back with further information regarding how the places will be distributed. It is a positive sign that the expansion of higher education is back on the agenda, but it would have been even better if the institutions themselves had control over the distribution of the new places.

The beginning of the week has been marked by meetings with representatives from the Matariki Network. The network consists of seven universities in Dartmouth, Durham, Queen’s, Otago, Tubingen, Western Australia and Uppsala. The motto is “Partnering for a better world” , and the work involves exchanges of students, researchers, staff and faculty , benchmarking, social responsibility activities in culture and sport , joint training , and more.

One purpose of Matariki is to act as a “critical friend” . For example, we have been using experts from the network for the evaluations of the KrUUt Project (Creative Education Development at the University of Uppsala). In the network we are also developing so-called “best practicies” and share experiences on various issues. In Australia and New Zealand they have substantial experience in student recruitment in Asia, where we have much to learn. We on the other hand have knowledge of how to work in Africa through our SANORD-cooperation, which we can share .

Another important area of collaboration is the promotion of research and innovation. Each member is responsible for a research theme, with a focus on interaction and collaboration. Uppsala University’s research theme is Peace and Conflict Research, and as part of the theme a workshop was organized here in Uppsala last year. The other research themes are Cybersecurity (Dartmouth), Disaster Resilience (Durham), Energy , Resource and Environment (Queen’s), Brain and Mind (Otago), Quantum Sciences (Tubingen) , Medieval and Early Modern Thought and Effect , Digital Support for the social Sciences and Humanities (University of Western Australia) .

The meeting in Uppsala was led by Chairman Chris Higgins from Durham University, and we have, among other things, discussed the possibilities of Horizon 2020 and Erasmus +. Horizon 2020 is the EU’s new framework program for research and innovation, which will run from 2014-2020 with a total budget of around € 80 billion. Erasmus + is the new EU program for education, youth and sport, which also starts this year.

At the meeting, Uppsala University announced the new program Matariki Fellows. The aim of the program is to create opportunities for senior researchers to receive funds for research stays at another Matariki University. The ultimate goal is to expand the number of research contacts and international collaborations. Learn more and apply at the link which opens this week.

We also had fruitful discussions about increased cooperation on alumni activities. It has been an interesting meeting which I hope will lead to several concrete projects. Active network is a critical component of our work for greater internationalization, and we have much to learn from each other.

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Peter Waiswa from Makerere University School of Public Health. During the meeting I presented Uppsala University’s gift of SEK 50 000 to be used for equipment and training in a neonatal unit in Kampala, Uganda. The goal is to save lives and improve the health of both children and their mothers. This gift was given in the name of HM the Queen Silvia, on the occasion of the Queen’s 70th birthday on December 23, 2013.

It is important for us to create more and deeper partnerships with various partners on the African continent. I visited Makerere University last November together with, among others, Professor Stefan Swartling Peterson. He has worked at Makerere University himself, and has many ideas about what we can develop together.

From the right: Dr. Peter Waiswa, Professor Stefan Swartling Peterson and Vice-Chancellor Eva Åkesson.

Last Friday it was time for the degree conferment celebration for those who have received their PhDs and honorary doctor degrees during the year.

The day began as early as six o’clock in the morning with the traditional porridge breakfast with the students, and ended with a banquet in the Hall of State at Uppsala Castle.

It was, in other words a long festive day lined with celebrations. The ceremony in the university building’s auditorium started at 12 o’clock, and prizes and medals for great efforts that were awarded to 13 laureates.

The Conferment Ceremony is one of the highlights for us in the academia. We want to thank all of you who in various ways helped make this a memorable day for our new PhDs, honorary doctors and awardees.