First, I hope that all of you had relaxing vacations and that you now are full of energy and motivation, which is needed to drive ITM towards excellence in teaching, research and administration this semester. Myself, I had a great summer where I spent most of the time in Stockholm, being a tourist. Since I live on the country side (Åkersberga) it is quite interesting to come in to “the big city” as a tourist. Among many new experiences, I have found a charming coffee shop on Jakobergsgatan, Sempre with fantastic baristas that can make you marvelous cups of coffees (Note, two not named ITM employees with an Italian background has confirmed that my conclusion regarding the coffee quality is correct, Grazie!). Thus, in short I can summarize my vacation with the activities walks, enjoying good food and drinking fantastic coffee. Not so bad uh!
As all of you know that the ITM school is hiring lots of new faculty at the moment, actually most among all schools at KTH. One reason is, of course, that we are expanding the ITM activities on the Södertälje Campus to include research besides the already ongoing teaching activities. Here, ITM plans to hire eight new faculty members. Recently, we could see a big smile from the Department Head Kristina Palm as she could hire her first new faculty. As a matter of fact, as you read this blog Jannicke Hauge has already begun her new job as an associate professor in production logistics. Thus, the historical event of building up research at Campus Södertälje will be started by Jannicke and we will see where it leads……..to be continued.
Hiring of faculty is taken place at the other five departments also. Björn Palm at the Departments of Energy Technology and Mauro Onori at the Department of Industrial Production are hiring 4 assistant professors each. Sofia Ritzén at the Department of Machine Design and Annika Borgenstam at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering are hiring one Associate Professor and two Assistant Professors each. Finally, Matti Kaulio at the Department of Industrial Technology and Management is hiring three Associate Professors and three Assistant Professors. Thus, me and the other faculty members in the ITM recruitment board will spend many hours this fall to interview the best candidates for each position, to ensure that we hire the person with the best qualifications for each position. I will talk more about the results of these interviews in my later blogs this fall.
Finally, I must share some happy news with you since my last blog. When Karin Steneholm successfully defended her doctor degree on June 10, I celebrated that I had participated in graduating my 50th student with a PhD degree. This would not have been possible without the help of my excellent colleagues as well as without motivated and hard-working students. Therefore, I feel happy and grateful for having these opportunities and I hope to be able to continue to supervise new students in the future.
/Pär Jönsson, Vice Dean