Four more years as head of CBH – here are Mikael's priorities

Looking back on the years since CBH was established in 2018, Mikael Lindström sees a successful school with many areas of strength, but which needs to become better at marketing itself.

“I think we could get even better at explaining the purpose of our activities. We work a great deal with the global challenges, so it would be good if we could increase the connection to them,” says Mikael Lindström.

“The four areas of strength that we defined when we became a school in 2018 – materials, health, environment and energy – are areas in which we are good, but they do not really show where we are headed. It would be good if we could explain these concepts in our theme areas a bit more.”

”For instance, we are looking to focus on food technology, but you could just as well say that it is about decreasing world hunger. This makes it a little easier to understand the meaning of such an effort.”

What could better framing entail?

“An increased commitment. Wallenberg Wood Science Center have accomplished this by quite simply saying: new materials from wood. Then you understand what their research is all about. Of course, there is a lot of various specialist expertise and basic research within that concept, but you can still gather around these broader themes.”

Is this the most important thing you want to accomplish?

”Yes, on the education and research side. I would also like us to become a little better at our internal processes and this is what the 100 days are about. We are going to illuminate our processes when it comes to recruitment, how we follow up on finances and our education processes – and try to see where we can streamline these processes.”

Yes, you have talked about these 100 days. What do you mean by that?

”When a president takes office in the US, there usually are a lot of decisions made during the first 100 days. Our idea in the school management is to make use of this time to work a little more intensively to connect our administration with our core activities, so that they can become a bit more integrated.”

Where do you think CBH is at right now?

“If you look to the recent research assessment exercise (RAE), we are really in the forefront, even world-class, in some of our fields. So we are doing really well. At the same time, I know that it is a very stressful situation and people think that our funds are not enough and that the costs of our operations are too high.”

“When it comes to education there have been a lot of good initiatives, especially during the pandemic. I believe in having a high presence on campus and mixing on-site education with digital elements when it is useful.

In order to stand strong in the face of global competition, Mikael Lindström believes that KTH best not place too much emphasis on digitization.

“If you look globally, digital education is increasing and I think there are other universities whom are better at this than KTH can ever be. Both due to the fact that they have English as their first language and that they have invested in digital learning for a very long time. For us, I believe it is important to protect our living campus environment with education, research and housing.”

The infrastructure of KTH is a strength, along with its strategic location in various places in the region. Not least in central Stockholm, a city which according to the Head of School has a good reputation in the world when it comes to sustainability and innovation.

“Much of our education and research is about sustainability. We also have a strong tradition of innovation and processes where many of our employees are involved, and we also see that more and more of our students are starting to get involved. We actually have the most startups per employee in the world as a university when you look at compilations like this, even more than what MIT and Stanford have,” says Mikael Lindström.

What areas will be prioritized during this four-year period?

“If we look at the research side, we will try to create more multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary environments that involve several parts of the school. The global challenges are too complex for one research branch to be able to contribute with solutions so we need to work very broadly.”

“There is WISE, which is a KAW investment (Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation) on sustainable materials ─ where the school can be involved in many parts. In the health area, there are also large KAW investments, for example Data-driven Life Science, where we can involve more of the school's activities. So one challenge is to balance our extremely successful external financing with actually using our internal resources in a good way.”

And when it comes to education?

“Here some very successful research environments needs to be linked back to teaching. One example is to open up and give master courses in food technology, if we will make an investment within this field.”

“We have also gotten started with lifelong learning. These are usually courses for working professionals and there is a lot to do in further education. Ergonomics at MTH has been very successful and has many courses with a lot of participants. I think that this autumn we will have around 40 lifelong learning courses at the CBH School, so we have gone from a small number in a fairly short time.”

What areas of the administrative support will be prioritized?

“My goal is for everyone to feel that they are doing their part to make the administrative support and the teachers and researchers more connected, so that they are not separate parts.”

“We can do this by creating groups with both administration and researchers. As with Lifelong Learning, led by Per Berglund. There we have included communication, education administration and teachers, so that you get a little more understanding of each other's work and also increased respect between different groups.”

Is there anything else that you want to tell CBH's employees?

“I think everyone has managed this pandemic fantastically! For almost two out of four years, the CBH School has been in a pandemic. In English there is the expression "Managing the unforeseen” ─ no one could have imagined that this could happen.”

“We have been able to change and keep up with education, research and collaboration, and we also actually got started with our foreign collaborations with partner universities. It is fantastic that this can be achieved with digital tools. I also believe that creating new educational and research collaborations will go faster in the future when you meet digitally,” says Mikael Lindström.

Text: Sabina Fabrizi