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2019: a year of many meetings

The Energy Platform's Deputy Director, Christophe Duwig, together with Lina Bertling Tjernberg, Director.

NEWS

Published Dec 16, 2019

Hello there! Lina Bertling Tjernberg, Director of the Energy Platform at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, you have held the role of Director for a year now - how has it been?

"It has been a fantastic year filled with exciting meetings, both with researchers and students within our field at KTH, and with people outside academia. My vision is for the Energy Platform to be an inclusive and inspiring meeting place for exchanges and networking, and a foundation for collaboration. In addition, I think we have taken several steps during the year to create more and sometimes unexpected collaborations between the researchers at KTH, and also opened several doors to build stronger collaboration with the world around us."

Looking back, what are the highlights from the past year?

"Our last meeting for this year's KTH Energy Dialogue, which was fully booked and attended by 250 participants. During this year's event, we celebrated the research platforms reaching their tenth anniversary with a theme where we highlighted research that can help us meet the UN climate goals. KTH Energy Dialogue is a highly appreciated event and an important opportunity for us in the energy field at KTH to meet up. Next year's KTH Energy Dialogue is set to launch on 19 November, so book the date!"

"Our annual doctoral school was held this year at Shanghai Jiaotong University (SJTU). Next year, it is our turn to host the school, which is a collaboration between the European network Cluster and the Chinese SEEEP. Here, the doctoral students gain a number of multidisciplinary skills in systems engineering, teamwork, presentation techniques, design-thinking and peer learning."

You also participated in this year's Almedalen Week with your own seminar - what was your intention with that?

"We held a seminar during Sustainable Innovation's sustainability forum on the M/S Teaterskeppet conference ship under the heading Research for sustainable energy systems of the future. Both researchers and students participated and had the opportunity to discuss everything from our transition to sustainable energy systems to our research to increase the efficiency of solar cells. It was highly appreciated and offered many opportunities to make new contacts. The biggest group attracted by the event comprised representatives from the business sector who wanted to gain a better insight into the opportunities we can offer them at KTH. So we plan to participate next year and are currently looking for exciting projects to take with us. The date is already booked for 29 June."

So what do you see ahead of you in 2019, other than the fixed milestones?

"We are planning both seminars and workshops that can become new meeting places for researchers and students, where we can also meet across our disciplines. During the past year we have had an internal call for funding to lay the foundation for more interdisciplinary collaborations. Work is currently underway to review the applications so that we can support the candidates who actually do create bridges between different people and activities within KTH."

"In addition, together with the students, we hope to launch the KTH Energy Club as an inspiring meeting place where we can discuss and learn from each other. We have been inspired by similar meeting places at Stanford and believe it can become popular at KTH as well."

"During next year, we will also conduct a review of our website so that it gives the type of good overview of the energy field at KTH that we want to show. It should be easier to follow our work here, but also to find new contacts for collaboration."

You have rounded off the year with a number of school visits among the KTH schools with research and education in the energy field. What was the purpose of them?

"On the one hand, it is about giving researchers a better opportunity to make contact with us at the Energy Platform. So we have informed about how we can support them as well as the ways in which we can offer more collaborations. On the other hand, it has been an opportunity for us to get to better know the people and places in the field. The visits represent one of the steps we take to create a better overview of the assets we have within energy research at KTH, and to allow us to highlight more exciting projects. By gaining a more in-depth insight into the different activities, we can also recognise the links between them and then we can tie together more threads between different projects and people in order to create new collaborations that can lead to success."

What else do you want to mention from the past year?

"We have participated in several other dialogues during the year with politicians, the business sector and the general public. One example is the seminar, "Electrification - threats and opportunities" , organised by the Society of Parliamentarians and Researchers (Rifo) at the beginning of the year. Since then I have participated in countless presentations and talked about capacity shortages, but above all about different technological solutions for energy storage. We normally talk about our third assignment, and I want to make a point about how important it is that we as researchers take the time to spread knowledge in society. Rifo itself is an association in which many KTH researchers are members that aims to build bridges between politicians and researchers. Knowledge is the foundation of our democracy, not least in an era where we are challenged by threats in terms of how the spread of information is used to manipulate and in the abuse of power, as with the case of Cambridge Analytica."

"Last but not least, during the year I built up a new management team for the Energy Platform together with Christophe Duwig (Vice Director) with a reference group that includes the different schools at KTH. We are now developing ideas on how to best reach out within the schools, where the school visits provide an important platform. My belief is that the foundation of research is the passion to pursue research. By meeting with and learning from each other, we can get inspired and create new ideas, and together create solutions for the sustainable energy systems of the future."

Text: Magnus Trogen Pahlén

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Last changed: Dec 16, 2019