Newsmail #73, 2023-11-10

Dear all,

This week has been intensive for all with the start of the new courses and the wrap-ups of last period’s courses.

The week has seen a lot of budget meetings, there are many uncertainties regarding next year, both regarding expected costs and expected income. The funding system for teaching will be changed, the rector has told us that the changes should benefit the actual teacher, more freedom for us to actually decide on how to use the funds and opportunities to select (and unselect) various costs. We see some effects of that already, the rent of our buildings will be increased even more, but in return we expect to receive more funds. With that said, in the management group, we have begun to discuss whether we’d be able to reduce our office space even further to get more freedom to use our funds for other purposes. I’ll discuss this further next week with the faculty, the actual decision will be made in December, before the end of this year. In this revision, we’ll also look closely on how we use the non-office parts of the building such as HK-rooms, to really assess if we need these or not.

Cost is only one aspect – income is another. KTH increased the number of students of one of our five year programs this fall which will see increased income for us. We also start a new Master’s program in Mechatronics next year and expect the number of master students to increase. I also note that we have a record-high number of research applications submitted.

This week we invited the KTH head of IT to the MMK mgmt. group, Hans Wohlfart. He presented the KTH-IT organization and talked openly about challenges and opportunities relating to IT. As you can imagine, IT infrastructure is getting increasingly complex and there is a need to rethink the service and products that KTH-IT offers the departments. We are happy that we have been able to provide input from MMK to this process.

This week we also received news that our own Fredrik Asplund has been promoted to associate professor. With colleagues such as Fredrik, the future of MMK is brighter than the sun.

Best,

Martin