Annika Östman Wernerson: Facilitating international exchanges more important than ever

The coordinating body, which includes, among others, International Staff Services, KI Housing and KI Career Service, is working to create a successful and inclusive research environment, and all this is worth drawing attention to.

The challenges include, as before, migration law, accommodation, Swedish skills, career continuation in Sweden and employment opportunities for accompanying partners. Cooperation with other sectors of society is vital and we look forward to further progress in this respect. There is, for example, the government’s commission on proposed measures to improve the ability of universities to attract and retain doctoral students and researchers. Let us continue our efforts to make sure that the university and our support functions can create together as welcoming and effective environment as possible for international talent.

Renewals of collaboration agreements with China

Promoting academic cooperation outside Sweden is one of our most important missions as an international university. Last week, colleagues from the International Relations Office and I travelled to China. Apart from meeting rectors and other officers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Fudan University, Shandong University, the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Peking University and the universities’ partner hospitals there, I had the privilege to hold a lecture to students of three of the universities on The Globalisation of higher education. 

Every year, researchers from KI and their colleagues at Chinese universities co-published over 600 papers, and KI has a large alumni network in the country. Our relations with China stretch back to the 1970s and have grown at pace with its research community. While on this trip, I signed four renewed agreements on academic cooperation. Meanwhile, at meetings with the health and education ministries, we stressed the importance of academic freedom.

Development of the life-science cluster

Another initiative is to make Stockholm-Uppsala a world-leading life-science region.  At a conference on 10 October, large sections of the life-science sector in Uppsala-Stockholm met to discuss how its development is to be effected. As a medical university, KI is a natural part of this initiative, the aim of which is to broaden our collaboration with the healthcare sector and make mutual exchanges with companies and other life-science actors more possible to bring about. We must make it easier for them all to collaborate, and this was one of the issues that the conference addressed. 

Decision on compensation for the freezer malfunction

A decision was taken on 15 October concerning compensation for the Neo freezer malfunction. The Department of Medicine in Huddinge (MedH) will receive a total of SEK 30 million to be distributed by the head of department to the researchers affected, regardless of which department they belong to. The ruined research material is, of course, irreplaceable, but via the president’s fund for strategic initiatives, this 30 million will above all enable the operations to support the junior researchers whose careers have taken a severe blow and to restore biobanks and the re-accumulation of research material. The causes of the malfunction could be found at different organisational levels and while the compensation on which we are now agreed comes from the president’s budget, MedH itself is expected to make a financial contribution to help compensate the affected research groups.

As we now approach half term, I hope that everyone at KI, staff and students alike, can derive a sense of pride from the daily headway made by research projects, education programmes and studies and from our continuous achievements. So why not seize the opportunity to celebrate this by enjoying the richly coloured palette of autumn on your days off?