Newsmail #12, 2021-12-21

Dear all,

You might have seen in the news-flow today that the Swedish government introduce new restrictions starting Dec 23. There are some direct consequences for us and our activities. We will likely be required to keep social distancing in our building, in lecture rooms, in labs etc. Same procedure as we had basically during the entire academic year 2020/21. No more than four people in our regular meeting rooms and HK rooms at the same time for example. No crowded lecture rooms. The only way to implement this for us is to transfer to remote work as much as possible, to limit the number of people in our MMK/ITRL buildings, and to transfer most teaching activities to zoom, to enable space for the activities that needs to be on campus and in our buildings. There will be more details on www.kth.se the coming days.

Some other news include that the MMK building is a bit upside down now with all moving around of boxes, furniture, and other stuff. It’s difficult to be there and not be in the way for the movers. It will also be a bit surprising if every box, every chair, and every table ends up in the exact right spot since we had to change moving company and a lot of extra features have emerged in the process, so I ask everyone to be patient when returning to the office and allocate some time to get reorganized.

Last week we also saw the final presentations of this year’s HK projects. It’s very impressive to see what our students are able to achieve in their final years at KTH. At last minute, we needed to switch to remote presentations, due to the Covid-situation, which on the other hand enabled a much larger audience with attendees from all over the world.

Erika distributed MMKs Christmas gifts to all who attended the dinner on Wednesday last week. If you did not attend, your unit manager will give you your gift after Jan 10.

Now I want to wish all a nice holiday!

Best,

Martin