Newsmail #86, 2024-03-15

Dear all,

This week we hosted a visit at MMK by the University Director Kerstin Jacobsson (and the deputy director Fredrik Oldsjö) on Wednesday. Kerstin is in charge of the KTH University Administration, which includes a total of 1150 people. We spent almost three hours at MMK, first a meeting with the mgmt. Group, then a tour of our facilities followed by a joint lunch with the faculty in Gladan. We talked openly about our challenges regarding support and admin, and the directors also shared openly their struggles and concerns with the current reorganization of the entire administration. On April 1st, all admin staff within finances, HR and communication will leave our school organization and join the central KTH admin organization.

Both Kerstin and Fredrik were impressed by seeing MMK, in particular with the positive atmosphere during the lunch meeting. They were impressed by the way our colleagues talked positively about our admin experiences, for example our support for exams and our service center in general. With that said, they also emphasize that we really need to inform them if anything is not ok, not sufficient, could be improved. Please discuss in the unit meetings so that we can compile a nice wish-list, we now have a nice window of opportunity to improve the support that we get.

Yesterday I joined a workshop at ITRL where the industry partners pitched research project proposals. Scania, Ericsson, Trafikverket, Region Stockholm, all of them have research grant proposals that could be relevant for many at MMK, many interesting and relevant research proposals. If you did not get the invite to the workshop, please sign up on the ITRL website for future such workshops.

On Tuesday I hosted a group of 21 children, age 12-13. We met a professor and talked about Energy, we visited the “House of Science” and the Production- and Energy labs. And had a slightly chaotic lunch with lots of ice cream dessert. The children were impressed by the engagement of the participating KTH faculty.

Now I wish everyone a nice weekend,

Martin