Some weeks are livelier and more enjoyable than others – like last week! Running from one meeting to the other like a squirrel is not always that fun but last week was actually very rewarding in that respect. Sometimes it just feels like a giant jig-saw puzzle that needs to be put together but without the “nice picture” meaning that there is very little guidance to figure out how to put the pieces together, if you get the metaphor.
Last week started with a good and productive steering group meeting for Energy and Environmental engineering program (W) with ABE, CHE and EES schools held together by Sissi Rizko and after lunch, Monday, I participated in a wonderfully creative workshop in one of our energy courses, MJ2410 Energy Management, where 130 students worked intensively on a plan for a Net-zero Energy Campus for KTH. It was an amazing activity and a topic that obviously really engaged the students. In four hours they came up with so many good ideas that we really could try to implement as a part of our Sustainability work. Great fun and very inspiring. Thanks to Hatef and Nelson for involving me!
Tuesday held the “first shovelling of sand event” for the new campus in Södertälje. It was a great event with around 300 people present and a great interest for the project with good and inspiring speeches from our folks; Prefect Kristina Palm and pro-rector Eva Malmström but also from the city from Scania and Astra Zeneca and from Mikael Damberg representing the Swedish Government as Minister for Enterprise. The same day we also had a small a “celebration dinner” in the evening for the team that has created the project KTH Live-in-lab so far.
Wednesday we again had the GA-meeting (about 8-10 per year) with all the other schools discussing several important issues, for instance the future structure of KTH education, who can supervise a M.Sc. thesis and so on. These meeting have really improved under the leadership of Per Berglund and Carina Kjörling. Last Thursday I also had the opportunity to lecture for KTH Executive School on the topic of Energy Systems and big data in the course Digital Transformation. Yes – you could imagine the preparations for that…
In between everything I had several meetings with our M.Sc students for their final projects and our Ph.D students. Friday was for some “unplanned” reason a day where all meetings were done by aid of Skype and Adobe Connect. It proved that we are able to use modern communication tools as well. We have students group on the American west coast, in Australia, in Singapore, in Hong Kong and in southern Europe along with the on-campus students all working together in groups. It´s a small world…
Yes, I was pretty tired last Friday evening…
Per Lundqvist, GA