Mikael on education in spring 2021

As you know, unfortunately, the spread of Covid-19 in the Stockholm region has been increasing for a few weeks now and the pandemic affects us all in different ways. I'm sure you all do the best you can, but I still want to remind you to respect current recommendations. Avoid congestion, keep your distance, wash your hands and stay home if you are ill. The principal has sent the same recommendations to our students. In order to be able to keep parts of the teaching, laboratory work and more going on site, everybody must help out. We all want a living campus so we have to help each other to minimize the spread of infection. That's the best thing we can do right now.

At the beginning of next week, the president will make a decision that the spring semester's courses will also be conducted digitally combined with scheduled meetings on campus. As far as possible, all students should physically meet teachers and other students in the courses. The teaching conducted on campus shall mainly consist of practical elements such as laboratory work, supervised teaching or teaching with a clear need for interaction between student and teacher or between students.

Last week, the CBH management and SSG were inspired by the latest research in the rehabilitation of staff with fatigue syndrome. We looked at some good examples from other organizations and discussed how we at CBH can work more effectively throughout the whole rehabilitation process. We did this jointly, union representatives and employers, because we both think it is very important. We want to be better at welcoming back employees who have been on sick leave due to stress-related problems.

This week, the good news came that the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (KAW) is making a new national investment in computer-driven life science, with SEK 3.1 billion over twelve years. The goal of the program is to build a broad competence across the country, to ensure the future need for researchers in computer-driven life science both in academia and industry. A total of 39 international top researchers are planned for recruitment, a graduate school for 260 doctoral students / industrial doctoral students and 210 postdoctoral positions. As part of this initiative, a new form of service, industrial postdoctoral fellows, will be established which gives 45 newly graduated researchers the opportunity to combine research in academia and business.

Mikael