Category: Uncategorized (Page 2 of 34)

Yesterday the Public Health Agency of Sweden issued local advice for Uppsala aimed at curbing the spread of infection, now that the pressure on health services has begun to increase in our region. Last week we wrote here in the blog that we need to take a step back in the current infection situation; now even greater discipline is required of all of us to help. Over the next two weeks, we must be extra careful to follow the recommendations. These recommendations are not actually completely new; it is more a matter of applying existing rules and guidelines even more strictly.

During the spring and autumn we have developed and applied effective solutions in our activities and infection rates at the University have not given cause for concern. However, we need to be equally careful away from work.

There is a striking need to reduce the burden on public transport. In accordance with the stricter advice, over the next two weeks it is particularly important to give everyone at the University who can work from home the opportunity to do so, especially those who are dependent on public transport for getting to work. In this way, we will make room for those who really do have to take the bus to their job or studies.

If everyone who can makes room in local transport, keeps their distance in shops and minimises social contact with people outside their own household, this will yield results.

The University’s activities will continue as before in formats that are adapted for infection control. We will not close our premises to students or staff, but we will make an even greater effort to keep our distance and avoid crowding.

Infection rates are increasing in Uppsala and we need to be particularly careful right now and in the coming weeks when we choose to meet physically. After all, in many cases digital alternatives work extremely well. However, sometimes meeting in well-planned and orderly ways helps us to keep going now, when we know that this situation is going to last longer than we thought at first.

We decided quite early on in the pandemic not to routinely postpone or cancel activities, but to try to adapt instead. Many events have necessarily been almost completely digitalised – and have far surpassed expectations. Others have been adapted with spacing to enable us to meet anyway, sometimes in combination with online streaming.

This past week we have participated in several adapted events of this kind. Being able to meet in somewhat more formal ways to celebrate important occasions and initiatives gives an energy boost and new momentum, and creates memorable moments.

One example is the recent inauguration of the interdisciplinary research project AI4Research. This is a five-year project designed to reinforce, renew and further develop research in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. We are delighted to have received generous support from the Beijer Foundation and Anders Wall for the new Beijer Chair in Artificial Intelligence, held by Professor Thomas Schön, director of the new project. This is an exciting venture that will benefit the entire University and many fields of research. Another exciting project that was inaugurated this week is GlobeLife, a project for developing interdisciplinary collaborations in global health between our University and Karolinska Institutet.

It was a particular pleasure to have the opportunity as Vice-Chancellor to present the award “For Zealous and Devoted Service of the Realm” at a fine – and carefully distanced – ceremony in the University Main Building on Thursday. This award dates back to 1803 and is presented once a year to those who have been employed by the state for at least 30 years, or 25 years in connection with retirement. This year, 61 people were thanked for the important work they have done and do at Uppsala University.

It was also pleasing to have the opportunity to plant a new tree in the Botanical Garden, a gift from Akademiska Hus. My thanks for this gift, and for a good partnership over the years!

Last thursday I was invited to a roof-raising ceremony at Building 10, Nya Ångström. The building has reached the point where the facade and roof are virtually finished.

The builders had gathered on the ground floor to celebrate this milestone. We walked into the atrium at the heart of Building 10. The atrium is stunning, soaring nearly 30 metres to the ceiling. You can now begin to sense the setting taking shape, with reception, teaching premises, restaurant and offices for the IT Department.

I was invited to make a speech. The workers stood on the different floors around the atrium. It was quite a feeling to look up and see all the people involved in constructing this building. I tried to describe how important their work is. When it is all finished, Nya Ångström will have a total floor area of 100,000 square metres for education and research in technology and natural sciences. This facility will be a focal point for Swedish and international students and researchers. It will make a significant contribution to the future of Uppsala, the region and indeed the whole country. I thanked them for carrying out this important project within the planned time and budget, despite the complications caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Finally, I had a chance to look at the placement of the Foucault pendulum, which will be 28 metres long. The bracket is already fixed in the ceiling and the circle in the floor over which the pendulum will swing is already clearly marked.

I cycled away feeling grateful and proud.

Johan Tysk, Vice-Rector of the Disciplinary Domain of Science and Technology

The infection situation in Sweden, and particularly in Uppsala, is cause for concern. The number of people testing positive for COVID-19 has increased sharply in the last few weeks. Young people, not least students, have been identified as groups that are playing a major role in spreading infection.

To some extent, students have been unfairly singled out for criticism. There are examples of social gatherings among students leading to the spread of infection, but the figures do not really show that students differ from other groups of young people, according to Johan Nöjd, infection control doctor in Uppsala. Our impression is that students’ unions and student nations in Uppsala are continuing to act responsibly.

Nevertheless, the situation right now gives cause for concern. We certainly do not want to end up in the same situation as in the spring, when the universities had to move all their education online.

That is what makes it particularly important that we continue to follow the general advice to keep our distance, wash our hands and avoid gathering in large groups. The longer the pandemic goes on, the more we relax. Now it is time to concentrate again and make sure that we really do keep our distance.

Time to step back a pace, in other words. This applies to our students of course, but it also applies to all the rest of us!

The autumn deans’ away days at home on Thursday to Friday were a welcome physical meeting. We had fewer participants than usual this time and used spacious rooms in the Castle. Meeting in real life and letting the conversation flow in the room was invigorating and sparked new ideas in a way that is difficult to achieve digitally.

We started off with an absorbing debate about leadership during the coronavirus crisis. The balance between collegial management and line management changes in crisis situations, which affects the role of leader. Some participants were keen to have clear messages and more decisions from the top, while others thought that the decisions allowed welcome scope for adaptation to the local circumstances in each part of the organisation. There are many lessons to be learned. In a crisis, there may be good reason to deviate from normal procedures and take quick decisions, but it is important to be able to return to previous principles when the urgent danger is past and to find a way to restore functional normalcy. The pandemic started suddenly and as a crisis but has now moved into a more chronic state, and we need to find sustainable models that can work as long as the pandemic continues.

At present, the solutions vary somewhat between different parts of the University. Some differences are well-motivated, but perhaps not all. Those who feel the inconsistencies most are our students. We are receiving clear signals from them that coordination needs to improve. Certain programmes have all students on campus, others none.

This autumn, it is essential for everyone to focus on the established priorities: it is particularly important that teaching for first-year students, students with special needs, practical tasks and exams can be scheduled on campus to a sufficient extent. Our focus must be on the quality of our activities, and meeting physically in seminar rooms and laboratories is inspiring and enhances the quality of education for our students.

Our message is:

• This is going to take a long time – keep going, stay strong and remain alert.
• Act swiftly and resolutely when infection is discovered.
• Help one another so that everyone manages to give campus-based education to the prioritised groups and components (as set out in the Vice-Chancellor’s decision):

1. Courses for new students and the first semester of educational programmes.
2. Students for whom special educational support has been approved.
3. Practical tasks that cannot be performed digitally.
4. Examinations that are difficult to carry out digitally.
5. Final exams and mandatory components in the final year of educational programmes.

We also found time for other issues during the away days, such as implementation of the University’s Mission, Goals and Strategies document, the upcoming HEI audit of our quality assurance procedures and – not least – an overview of what’s going on in the students’ unions and disciplinary domains. Listening to one another and drawing inspiration from one another is an important part of finding new ways to make the most of the entire breadth of our comprehensive University.

Finally, we had a productive session on the ongoing inquiry on research infrastructure. This session included two entertaining features: we had to react to radical scenarios to test the positions we take and we took part in a photo competition “Guess which infrastructure”. Vice-Rector Mats Larhed won the competition – congratulations!

We have written previously about developments in the pipeline at European level in the area of research, education and innovation that will affect us in Sweden. A great deal has happened since then, both in Brussels and in Sweden.

Yesterday there was a digital hearing on the proposed national strategy for Sweden’s participation in the upcoming EU framework programme for research and innovation (Horizon Europe). The proposal has been drawn up by the coordinating group EU-SAM, which is led by Vinnova. Uppsala University welcomes this initiative, though we wish it had been in place a year ago. That would have given us a shared national platform from which we would have had better prospects of influencing the contents of the framework programme to align more with Swedish wishes and priorities.

One obvious trend is that in its initiatives, the EU is seeking engagement and co-financing from the Member States. The goal is to guide the countries, by various incentives, towards shared strategies for increasing effectiveness and interplay between their various systems of research, innovation and education. The initiatives stem from policy discussions that reach the higher education institutions all too rarely, despite the fact that universities and other HEIs account for more than half of Sweden’s participation in the framework programme. Thanks to our membership of The Guild, we now have insight into the processes and can participate in the discussion.

One good example of an important policy discussion of this kind is the agenda-setting initiative European Research Area (ERA ), which the European Commission presented today. The Commission’s communication proposes a ‘relaunch’ for the ERA through a ‘pact’ for research and innovation in which the Member States commit themselves to developing prioritised measures together. A good deal of the contents was as expected, for example, the call to Member States to concentrate on major societal challenges, particularly economic recovery and the digital and green transitions. One new goal is that within ten years, the Member States will devote five per cent of public funding for research – a proposed 1.25% of GDP – to the EU’s joint programmes and partnerships. The idea is for Member States to adopt the goals of the document voluntarily. To some extent, this reflects what The Guild has called for (read the document from the Guild here), although we would have liked to see the UN Global Goals as the foundation, rather than the needs of industry, as well as higher targets for public investments.

On the home front, we need national coordination and transparency in the Swedish process of developing positions and input. To be able to participate in EU-level conversations, we need to become clearer about what we want in Sweden and able to communicate this in our dialogue with European partners. This is our hope of the national strategy for Sweden’s participation in the EU research programme, which is now being prepared. We have given our input to the strategy, in which we emphasise that our priorities should be based on excellent science, stress the importance of basic research in the value chain and of infrastructure for research, and highlight the potential for integrating research and education at our comprehensive universities.

The new Commission has chosen to place education, research and innovation under the same commissioner, Mariya Gabriel – a clear signal of the link between research and education, which we consider self-evident – while the Swedish Government has chosen to limit itself to a strategy for the research programme alone. This is a shame when so much is now happening at the interface between education and research at the initiative of the Commission, for example, digitalisation, the career system and the transformation of our sector. This applies not least to the Commission’s latest European Universities Initiative, in which eleven Swedish higher education institutions are taking part in various alliances, in our case ENLIGHT. This has been called a ‘testbed’ for Vision 2030 on the Future of Universities, another Commission initiative targeting our sector.

Several trips to Campus Gotland were planned for the spring and autumn, including visits by the University Board and the International Advisory Council. Then came the pandemic. But this week the time had finally come to visit Campus Gotland. In the course of a busy two-day programme, prepared by Adviser to the Vice-Chancellor Olle Jansson, I met researchers, teachers, administrative staff, the county governor, representatives of the region and students. As always after a visit to Gotland, I returned to Uppsala full of inspiration and new insights.

We often say Campus Gotland is a place where we can try out new ideas in a smaller setting. Ideally, the experiences gained and lessons learned can be transferred to and advance all of our large University. At Campus Gotland, considerable parts of the University join up: 22 departments and the administration operate in the same corridors and congregate in the same lunchroom. New possibilities for collaboration, cross-disicplinary education and research open up when people meet in everyday life.

The new graduate school in sustainable development is one such inspiring example. I had the opportunity to meet head of research and director Jenny Helin and to see the fine, newly renovated premises with their view of the harbour. The graduate school is in the process of setting up, with several hundred applications for 12 new doctoral student positions that are now being evaluated and will be divided between the five research projects. The research environment built up will be multidisciplinary, with projects ranging from the energy transition in society, where Gotland has been selected as a national pilot, to investigation and questioning of the very concept of sustainability. Different meanings of the word affect what comes out of sustainability efforts in practice. The graduate school will also engage in external collaboration and combines regional relevance with international excellence.

The graduate school will provide an arena for encounters not just between different disciplines but also between different doctoral education traditions and different administrative processes from the home departments of the supervisor team. Challenges are bound to arise and those involved are prepared to take them on, though of course it would have been easier without the pronounced differences found in our large, decentralised University. I sense the existence of a problem-solving tradition at our newest campus, which we need to draw on. These experiences can be useful for the entire University; it is a key challenge to try to break down thresholds that put unnecessary obstacles in the way of cooperation across boundaries, in Uppsala as well. The graduate school will have all 12 newly admitted doctoral students in place in the new year and I look forward to following this exciting and innovative venture.

Other points on the programme on the first day included lunch with County Governor Anders Flanking and a presentation of Campus Gotland’s work with international students. After that, we discussed experiences from this period of the coronavirus and the application of recommendations from the Public Health Agency of Sweden and the Vice-Chancellor. Here too it became obvious that the differences that exist between departments and faculties in Uppsala come to the surface in Visby and grate unnecessarily. Both on Gotland and in Uppsala, we need more dialogue and cooperation about how we can learn from one another and eliminate unnecessary differences, a point that has also been brought up by the students’ unions in Uppsala.

On the second day, I met representatives of the Department of Game Design, a field that has obviously matured as an academic subject. The programmes attract students from all over the world who have done much to give the department a good international reputation by distinguishing themselves in competitions at gaming conferences. Doris Rusch, from MIT and Chicago, came to Visby for a conference and chose to stay. With her international networks and strong belief in the department’s potential, she is now helping to build up the research side in close collaboration with the already successful educational programmes. See an interview with Doris Rusch here.

I then met representatives of our partnership with Region Gotland – a collaboration with great potential where we are testing ways forward to find what works best for both partners. My stay concluded with a visit to Rindi students’ union where I heard about their vital experiences of involvement to promote student participation and of studying at Campus Gotland. I could see that our students are the people who can give us the most telling examples of ways in which our complex and compartmentalised organisation leads to unnecessary and baffling complications in day-to-day life on campus.

After nine years as deputy vice-rector, this summer I stepped up as Vice-Rector of the Disciplinary Domain of Medicine and Pharmacy (Medfarm). This is an exciting challenge that I am very much looking forward to. It’s the first time Medfarm has chosen a vice-rector with roots in the Faculty of Pharmacy. I feel I enjoy strong support from the entire disciplinary domain and the first few months have more than confirmed my positive expectations of the role!

As in all parts of the University, in our disciplinary domain too, the spring was dominated by the coronavirus pandemic. I am very pleased and proud that all the staff were so committed, flexible and pragmatic in their approach at a time that brought new challenges and demanded changes in the way we taught, did research and studied. By our combined efforts, we managed to reorganise our activities in a short space of time and were able to carry out our teaching and assessment remotely. We learned plenty of lessons at Medfarm, which we will take forward as we move ahead.

A great deal is happening at Medfarm and things are moving fast. One obvious example are the new opportunities offered by this autumn’s budget bill, which increases direct government funding for education and research. A larger budget than usual shows that the government has confidence in what we are doing.

Medfarm has drawn up a joint goal for collaboration between Region Uppsala and Uppsala University, focusing in particular on arrangements for carrying out student placements. The new six-year medicine programme will start in autumn 2021 with new funding from the government, and we are launching a completely new occupational therapist programme in response to requests from the health services to meet the region’s needs.

To provide motivation and obtain a clear picture of where we are heading and why, we need a vision. The vision will build up a picture of our future aspirations that we have courage and passion enough to believe in. As early as 5–6 October, I will be gathering the domain’s staff and students for a series of workshops to work together on our vision. The challenge will be to raise our sights and aim for what is best for the entire organisation – and by that I mean both Uppsala University and the Disciplinary Domain of Medicine and Pharmacy. All students and staff will have a chance to make their voice heard and everyone is invited to participate actively, whether in physical meetings or virtually. The workshops will be led by an English-speaking facilitator with extensive experience of similar processes at other universities in Europe.

The work on our vision is one of our most important tasks in 2020–21 and will influence our activities for a long time to come. I have invited everyone connected with the disciplinary domain to take part and get involved for Medfarm’s future! Register here: www.medfarm.uu.se/vision

Mats Larhed, Vice-Rector of the Disciplinary Domain of Medicine and Pharmacy

In just a few months, day-to-day working life has changed radically for most of us. Fewer journeys for meetings, fewer physical meetings, less small talk. Many people talk about feeling more efficient. However, many also say they feel more easily tired.

There is reason to stop and think about this. We have discovered that we can perform tasks that demand concentration and freedom from disturbances more efficiently when working remotely and at home, which has taught us to take a more positive view of working from home. However, the more time passes the more we realise that both we personally and our organisation have other needs too. A lot can happen when we meet up and chat more casually, without an agenda. Whereas physical meetings are invigorating, in the worst case digital meetings can sap our energy. We run a risk of missing out on the creative conversations that spark new ideas.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who spends many long hours in Zoom meetings. One meeting follows another, sometimes without a break, and in the worst case, on top of that you’re invited to some Zoom lunch sandwiched in between the other meetings. Having said that, it is noticeable that many people arranging meetings have understood and made changes for the better. Shorter sessions, with planned breaks and group discussions mixed in, a variety of working formats and clear instructions to participants to turn off their microphones (and turn them on when it’s time to talk) and to ‘raise their hands’ for attention.

If a reasonable format for a physical meeting is a maximum of one hour without a break, I would say that a digital meeting should last half an hour. Our brains can’t cope with any more. A few words of advice to you all: schedule breaks between meetings and during longer meetings. Go for a walk, get some air, make sure to see other surroundings and meet people. And one other tip: sit up – no meetings lying in the sofa. I speak from experience – there’s a risk of nodding off (hopefully with the video turned off).

Let us develop the good sides of digital working and add things that provide energy and new ideas.

The funding and organisation of research infrastructure is an urgent and vital issue for Sweden’s future as a research nation. Like many other stakeholders we raised this issue in our input to the government’s research bill. On Tuesday the government issued a short press release announcing that funds will be allocated in the autumn’s budget bill to both research infrastructure and direct government funding for higher education. Next year, both the direct government funding and the project and infrastructure funding available to the Swedish Research Council will be increased by a total sum in excess of SEK 2.7 billion. While it is positive that our message has been understood, we will naturally read the details in the research bill that is expected this autumn very carefully.

We also look forward with great interest to the inquiry that Tobias Krantz has just begun, on the very subject of the funding, organisation and prioritisation of research infrastructure. The research infrastructure landscape presents a fragmented picture, with many international linkages. An analysis of the system and the challenges we are struggling with is something the higher education institutions have long been calling for. Tobias Krantz was at Uppsala University yesterday. He met representatives of the FREIA Laboratory and the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC) and concluded the afternoon as the opening speaker at a Vice-Chancellor’s Seminar on research infrastructure.

It was a good seminar, with around 30 sparsely placed participants in the Humanities Theatre and more than 120 participants via Zoom. Many important questions were raised. A coherent structure is needed, with a clearly formulated mandate and long-term funding for the major facilities. That said, it is important to pick up on innovative, bottom-up ideas. The needs of research must be central and the higher education institutions have to be involved and exert influence. It is not easy to combine a long-term perspective and renewal. No single model will fit all research infrastructure. SciLifeLab is a successful example of a distributed infrastructure with many interlinked platforms and facilities that encompasses both sustainability and renewal.

With regard to funding as well, there will be no single solution. Fees are appropriate for some infrastructure facilities, but not for others. Although people often say that industry can contribute financially, a glance at the international picture shows that in the best case, industrial actors cover around 10 per cent of the costs. Having said that, there is great potential to recognise shared interests leading to joint projects with industry.

Another point that needs to be discussed in detail is our outlook on the balance between investments and operations. Some infrastructure facilities, particularly in humanities and social sciences, while not requiring high initial investment costs, take years to build up. It may therefore be more constructive to think instead about a building-up phase and an operational phase for more effective funding. In general, the inquiry needs to make impact analysis a recurrent theme.

The role of large-scale national e-infrastructure is another important issue that was discussed. Access to computational and storage resources is vital to ensure that other infrastructures work effectively and support research advances. E-infrastructure can therefore be regarded as the infrastructures’ infrastructure. We need to build on what already exists and come up with a coherent organisation with long-term funding that is based on research needs. Another area that must not be forgotten is instrumentation and accelerator development, the FREIA Laboratory being one example. This vital development of technology for infrastructure, which often goes on to benefit industry, falls between the cracks in terms of funding and needs to be made visible.

Tobias Krantz has received wide-ranging terms of reference and we are more than happy to assist his endeavours. In doing so, we must focus on the essentials and not forget that we HEIs can, and should, do certain things ourselves. Krantz, who throughout showed great interest in the issues, warned about exaggerated expectations of the inquiry and we do of course realise that it will not be able to solve everything. But we hope it will at least take us a few steps forward.