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Mikael on CBH's crisis preparation

Published Mar 26, 2020

Head of School Mikael Lindström informs on the CBH school's crisis preparation and how the work on RAE 2020 is progressing.

Dear colleagues,

With COVID-19, we are facing a situation that we have never seen before. As you have already noticed, it requires that we all help each other. As always, when we face unknown situations, there are concerns and therefore we try to inform as quickly as possible. Now, for example, CBH News will come out once a week. Currently, we do not know how long the effects of the pandemic will last, but we will need to be persistent. It is therefore essential that we all work together, try to find alternative solutions and take the precautions demanded by the situation.

At KTH, the crisis management group meets every day, and an extended crisis management group (the Coordination group), where heads of schools are also members, meets at least once a week to discuss how to handle the situations that arise. At the CBH School, we have decided not to activate our local crisis group, since this is a crisis that affects KTH and the entire world. Instead, we uphold the operations through our ordinary functions and make sure there is a replacement in case of illness. Since the recent developments are still very rapid, it is important that you keep yourself updated through KTH’s intranet. There might be daily updates, so it is important to use this link, which now also contains separate information for both students and employees:

As you all know, there are self-initiated processes at KTH that can be moved in time. When it comes to RAE 2020, the president’s assessment is that we will suspend the on-site visits of the international experts until week 34 in 2021. However, we will continue to work on the material. When it comes to the quality dialogues, which are the basis of our operational plan, these will be conducted digitally instead.

We have also carried out the elections to the school assembly on department level, and the result is presented in CBH News. Many congratulations to you who have been elected. I am very much looking forward to your work in creating a greater collegial support.

Finally, I want to thank you all for your fantastic efforts when it comes to switching to both digital teaching and digital ways of working.

Mikael

PS. Please read about the contributions from the researchers at CBH in developing a large-scale method that quickly can tell if a person has had COVID-19 and therefore is immune to the disease: