Personal mobility from KTH to industry
A part-time placement with an external organisation is a great way to gain new experiences and make valuable contacts.
The movement of people from academia boosts alliances and the exchange of knowledge between the university and other stakeholders in society, and increases opportunities for finding innovative solutions to current and future challenges. This adds to KTH’s body of experience, so the university can contribute to renewed, relevant research and education, and expand students’ contact with the job market.
Personal mobility from KTH to industry should help to:
- Develop new contacts and relations, while strengthening existing relations.
- Inspire environments unaccustomed to external collaboration.
- Complement ongoing efforts.
- Meet the employee’s and the operation’s development plan (manager approval required).
To consider prior to an exchange
- Ensure that the exchange is in line with the strategic priorities of the parties involved.
- Make preparations for the issues and perspectives that might be worth feeding back to education and research, and how lessons learnt can be communicated to colleagues.
- Define the added value that the exchange should entail for the host organisation.
- Plan for ways in which the academic can become an active member of staff with a workplace, a schedule, meetings and a contact person. Be sure to plan activities that get the academic involved in the organisation’s business and activities.
- Plan for ongoing status updates and discourse, with time to reflect on lessons learnt.
- If the organisation has adjunct professors, affiliated faculty or industry-employed doctoral students linked to KTH – make sure they are informed about the exchange.
Meet co-workers stationed in the external organisation
The PAUS project – Personal Mobility for the Academy with a focus on Educational Collaboration and Student Participation – was an internal KTH initiative that stimulated personal mobility from academia to external organisations. It ran between 2018 and 2021.
Read more about PAUS
Ingalill Söderberg, ABE – Nordea Regional Office North
Where did you do your exchange?
“I worked alongside Nordea’s regional manager in northern Sweden, on matters relating to the bank’s customer relations and how they change when the bank’s financial advisor is a chatbot instead of a human advisor. It entailed contacts with advisors and customers, as well as the bank’s local management team. More specifically, I worked on quantitative analysis of the bank’s statistics relating to customer migration into the chatbot service, and development of questionnaires and an interview guide for in-depth analysis of customer reactions to the advice service going online.”
What areas or issues did you work with?
“The exchange related to digitalisation of financial services and different stakeholders’ (mainly customers and staff) reactions to it.”
Yolanda Hedberg, CBH, Docent
Where did you do your exchange?
“At the Centre for Environmental and Occupational Medicine, Region Stockholm. I took part in clinical development work relating to metal allergy at the Occupational and Environmental Dermatology unit.”
What areas or issues did you work with?
“The exchange enabled the development of diagnostic methods for skin allergy to various substances. I have previously worked with skin allergy issues, including chrome allergy from chrome-tanned leather, but this project focused on exploring several allergies, including metal allergies, by studying tattoo ink.”
Read more
(in Swedish)
Magnus Burman, ITM at Scania
What areas or issues did you work with?
“How can we make lighter structures in Scania’s products a reality? That was the basic question underlying my exchange at Scania. Lower vehicle weight means greater transport performance, which is positive from an environmental and sustainability perspective. But new materials also present challenges in design methods, new production and assembly methods and so on.
“My main job is researching carbon and glass fibre composites, sandwich materials and lightweight constructions at Aeronautical and Vehicle Engineering. At Scania I’ve mainly focused on general communication about the subject of composite materials and how they can be used to reduce weight, which I’ve done through a series of open seminars. I’ve also been able to work in a more concrete way by taking part in a couple of development and demonstration projects, which have also involved KTH students.
“Working to increase understanding and start building a shared knowledge base around lightweight materials at a company like Scania has been really exciting and educational.”
