Newsmail #11, 2021-12-07

Dear all,

Last week we received the final version of the RAE report (Expert reports | KTH Intranet). The report is fully in line with what I have previously reported after our feedback-meeting with the RAE chairperson (Newsmail #6). The expert panel gives us a lot of compliments as well as suggestions for improvements. The most controversial suggestion is probably the suggestion that we change the name of the department… This, and all other suggestions, will form the basis for our development plan for the future. We will meet with the management group on Jan 19, a full day, to start the overall structure of this development plan, identify priorities and challenges. The development plan needs to interact with our various roadmaps for our research activities and educational activities, and point towards where we want to be as a crucial part of our University in, say, five years from now. We have many leaders; research leaders, education leaders, leaders for various projects, tasks and activities, and it’s now crucial to try to identify our various goals for the next five years in these areas so that we can combine these into our overall development plan.

After reading the report I honestly believe we might have a new name for the department in five years, and I encourage all to read the report to see if you come up with the same new name as I did… I’ll tell you what I came up with if you tell me what you came up with…

There’s a lot of hard work to do to implement these suggestions, so it’s important that we do not aim too far, that we are realistic. The expert panel noted that we were the only department who did not state an ambition to grow, and, at the same time the department that has grown the most since last evaluation.

We are approaching the holiday season, and the pandemic situation is extremely uncertain. We are allowed to continue with all social gatherings, which I believe are very important now, and I look forward to our annual dinner next week, but on the other hand we just had to cancel our external demonstrations of our HK courses now due to the new restrictions, and it is likely that we’ll see new harder restrictions the coming weeks.

I also want to take the opportunity to congratulate our most recent PhD: Liridona Sopjani defended her thesis today. Congratulations and best of luck!

Best,

Martin