Newsmail #7, 2021-10-22

Dear all,

In the beginning of this week we held a development conference for faculty and senior staff of MMK. In total 30 people were registered. The agenda included three main topics for discussions: RAE follow-up and strategic research development, infrastructure (including office spaces) and MSc program development. Each topic included a workshop and was led by different people. I myself was home with a running nose and followed all discussions via zoom. It was quite difficult to be remote and not able to speak, but, the distance enabled more time for reflection.

Regarding the RAE follow-up and discussions of our future research strategies, I am happy to see that there is an appreciation of the recommendations from the RAE experts. There seems to be a strong support from MMK faculty to proceed with advances into a systems perspective, to develop our existing subjects in this direction and to take further steps into the area of complex dynamic systems.

Regarding infrastructure, the topic of our future office spaces is a topic that affects everyone. We have received a proposal from the interior architects, which has been scrutinized and discussed. As I see it, the benefit of this proposal, and the discussions, are that we get to talk about our real needs in terms of office spaces. And that there are different needs that needs to be handled. Different people have different needs, different units and groups have different needs. As I see this, we need now to see a next step in these discussions that are focused on these needs and how we can propose a solution that is adapted to these various needs.

In terms of lab, workshop and prototyping center, the planning has come quite far. We know which spaces we will use and are allocating equipment to various rooms. The focus on these discussions will turn towards staffing, service offering etc – which people do we hire to staff the infrastructure, which services do we provide in the future.

The second day focused on MSc program development. We did an exercise where we were assigned a task to redesign a completely new MSc program from scratch. This activity helps us to raise our perspectives and to try to look beyond the current smaller or larger obstacles.

And – I wrap up with some great news. Today I have signed a contract with a company that will replace the Convini-fridges on the forth floor with a new setup. With the procurement rules, we were not allowed to keep the agreement with the previous company and had to send out an open call for offers for a new period. This new company has promised us better food, fresher food, and lower prices. Even though I feel that I shouldn’t bet my future on these promises, I will at least be happy in the feeling that it actually might turn out to be as promised. If I quote (freely) my colleague Hans Johansson, I’d say that even a Pyrrhic victory is a victory (Pyrrhic victory - Wikipedia).

Now I wish all a nice weekend,

Martin et al