Newsmail #47, 2023-01-27

Dear all,

Yet another week has almost passed. Today, I’m at KTH in Södertälje to discuss Industrial Transformation. On Wednesday this week we met with the MMK Faculty (the senior staff) to discuss increased costs for rent and facilities. There are plans from KTH to reduce the costs for the departments, but the plans are rather long-term, so we need to expect that the situation might get a bit worse before it gets better again. But, since our office spaces are not exactly crowded, we might be able to do even more cuts in our office spaces. We did agree however that it’s important to have an open discussion regarding the prioritization of our building: to make sure that we discuss prioritization between for example office spaces, student labs, experimental facilities – to optimize the use of our building.

On Wednesday afternoon, I met with the new rector. It was my fourth meeting since he started in December. In comparison, I met the previous rector only two to three times over six years. At the meeting on Wednesday, I raised the need for a strategic portfolio for our educational programs, that we need an open discussion regarding which educational programs that KTH offers in the future.

At MMK, we have been discussing our program portfolio for about a year now, and, in particular on how to increase the collaboration between the tracks and programs. We continue these discussions now during the spring. In the current plan, we intend to file an application for a new MSc program in Mechatronics before the summer, which affects our current MSc program in Engineering Design.

Now I wish everyone a nice weekend,

Martin