Newsmail #11b, 2021-12-10

Dear all,

On Dec 1st, we submitted our budget for 2022 to KTH. The financial situation has recovered extremely well, which is due to us leaving parts of our building back to KTH end of this year, from very good external funding as well as from us not having been allowed to open up new positions or replace retiring staff members. We now have a positive budget, we have reserves and we have confidence that 2022 and onwards will give us opportunity to both grow and to make sure we have the resources we need to do our job.

The consequence of the above is that we are now understaffed, in particular in teaching activities. It is apparent since we haven’t been able to recruit teaching staff in a while, and I know that all staff members feel this and share the burden. It will still take some time to recruit new staff, and I estimate that we have now about ten positions in the pipeline for the immediate future, in total five academic positions, mainly assistant professorships plus a number of PhD positions and research engineer positions and positions to support the CDS/ITRL group. We also need to identify the future need for technicians and engineers, to replace the retired members in our workshops, which is high priority for 2022.

On Wednesday next week we can finally meet again physically at our annual Christmas Dinner. Please read the invite for details. With the current pandemic situation, it’s of absolute necessity that everyone follows the recommendations of distancing, staying home if feeling the slightest ill etc – but it is also of high importance that we meet each other to uphold our long and now famous MMK-culture (see the RAE report for details).

Have a nice weekend,

Martin