Newsmail #69, 2023-09-29

Dear all,

Yet another week has (almost) passed. Last week we saw to successful PhD defences, Martin Sjöman And Elias Flening. These activities symbolize one of the most important aspects of our activities; to award the highest possible academic degree, “Doctor of Philosophy”. I really appreciate the way that we recognize these successes, by holding proper receptions and parties. I also want to congratulate the two new doctors of course. And their supervisors.

This week, we have wrapped up this year’s salary revision. All salary dialogues have been held and the results are now being processed by HR and the union representatives.

The last two weeks, I have also been heavily involved in the upcoming organizational changes at KTH, the re-organization of the support services, the establishment of the school faculty group, changes to how we organize education within our school as well as a number of meetings focused on our JML-work.

There are some positive things on the horizon. One, as for now, anonymous, donor has offered to give us financial support to make investments into infrastructure for research, in the area of 3-4 MSEK. Our proposal is to use this opportunity to increase our abilities to approach research questions that relates to electrification of the society, for example drive trains for vehicles, and the transition to e-drive trains.

We also meet regularly with the now four departments in our neighbourhood to see how we further can work together in education, in particular with infrastructure for education, and how we can support and work together with the new courses and programs that are given by the department(s) that have, and will, move to our part of campus. Our main proposal is that we have a prototyping center which could be used by several departments, which would give us potential to make the activities even more sustainable.

Now I wish everyone a nice weekend,

Martin