KTH's President visited ABE
On Monday 16 March, KTH:s President Sigbritt Karlsson together with Deputy President Mikael Östling and KTH's new University Director Kerstin Jacobsson made their annual school visit to the ABE school. The focus for this year's visit, by request of the President, was the school's research centres and infrastructure.
Head of School, Muriel Beser Hugosson and Deputy Head of School, Mats Wilhemsson, were in charge of the programme together with the school's Centre Managers and representatives of the selected infrastructures. This year's visit took place in the Lounge on the ground floor of Teknikringen 10B and consisted largely of poster presentations.
Muriel began the afternoon by presenting the ABE School and what has happened during the year within our education, research and collaboration. Subsequently, the floor was given to representatives of the school's seven competence centres. Supported by a poster, the Centre Managers had the opportunity to talk about their activities in direct dialogue with the President, Deputy President and the University Director.
This was followed by information about the ABE school's education programmes. The school's Director of First and Second Cycle Education (GA) talked, among other things, about the school's undergraduate programmes' close links to sustainability. The Deputy Director of Third Cycle Education (vice FA) talked about, among other things, the ongoing review of all doctoral programmes within the school.
After a brief break, the poster presentations continued from the school's two strategic innovation programmes (SIPs); Viable Cities’ which has a focus on smart sustainable cities, and InfraSweden2030 which work towards achieving a competitive transport infrastructure with climate-neutral transport.
Two major networks were then presented; the Safe Places Network (Säkraplatser), which focuses on situation-based crime prevention, and the Environmental Humanities Lab (EHL), which brings together research in environmental humanities. The poster presentations ended with the school's new digital lab DiSa (formerly the BIM lab) which will be inaugurated in its new form in the Autumn of 2020 and KTH Architecture's lab environment the Digital Fabrication Lab (DFL) which also showed some 3D-printed models.
Mats ended the day with information about the school's bibliometric statistics and research revenues. He also spoke about the school's wishes regarding government capital investment in faculty reinforcement, doctoral education places and postdoc positions.
The President, Deputy President and the University Director were very pleased with the visit and the opportunity to discuss the activities of the competence centres and infrastructures directly with various representatives from the faculty. The afternoon provided a greater insight into the breadth of the ABE School’s activities.
The posters created for the event will be on display at the ABE School's premises at a later date. The school also plan to hold an open seminar in the Autumn of 2020 where the presentations will be held again so that all Centre Managers will have the opportunity to present to a larger audience.
Prior to the event, the ABE School’s management conducted a risk assessment in regards to covid-19 according to the guidelines of the Public Health Authority. In connection with this, several risk mitigation measures were taken to prevent, reduce and limit the spread of covid-19, which included limiting the number of participants.