The KI management’s visit to MBB
Thursday 21 March KI President Annika Östman Wernerson, Vice- President Martin Bergö and University Director Veronika Sundström, met with representatives from MBB to talk about the departments’ activities and on how we can strengthen our dialogue and cooperation going forward.
The discussions started with President Annika Östman Wernerson presenting KI’s nine strategic focus areas, which are essential to achieving the goals set out in Strategy 2030. Annika explained that these areas must be reconciled quarterly and that their main goal is to achieve a strong and attractive KI with sustainable structures, increased collaboration, clarity and transparency.
“Not everything will happen at once, but a lot is already well underway, and several activities have been initiated. The tasks assigned to each focus area are currently being concretized and formulated”, Annika explained.
The KI management also informed about the plans to form a new management team under the management group at central KI, with the deans, a student representative and the President as members, to enable a more effective organisation.
Excess of administrative capital
Annika also drew the attention to the question about the excess of the administrative capital at KI in general.
“Researchers save it for harder times ahead because of the system. Some funding is distributed to the departments in advance, but it would make more sense if we could do requisitions instead.”, Head of Administration at MBB, Carina Hammarström, replied.
Björn Högberg, Acting Head of Department, explained MBB’s organisation, it’s success and future challenges. Professor Elias Arnér presented the idea of a new international research school in Biomedicum.
Principal researcher Simon Elsässer talked about the challenges PIs facing when trying to keep the competence in their research teams:
“The experience is that the very best students already have offers when the positions are advertised”, Simon said.
"An inspiring department"
Judith Kreutzmann and Jil Protzmann, postdocs at MBB, presented what they see as MBBs strengths and weaknesses from a PHD-student and postdoc point of view. There has been successful larger network and social- events for everyone but the department still needs to work on the common sense of belonging, the student representatives said.
The KI management thanked for the meeting by complimenting MBB as an innovative organisation:
“You are an inspiring department that has solutions and ways that not many institutions have”, Vice- president Martin Bergö concluded.