When approaching a new year, each of the KTH schools signs a contract with our rector about the next year’s activities. On the educational side our mission is rather stable from year to year in terms of number new students and target numbers for graduations. For 2016 there is one major new activity, namely the start-up of the new BSc/MSc program on Industrial engineering and sustainability. The new program will be hosted by our campus in Södertälje. Associate professor Pernilla Ulfvengren has been appointed as program manager. Take a look at the program.

On the research side the operations contract is subject to more of “negotiations” about new research initiatives and new faculty positions which the different ITM departments put forward. If approved, new initiatives are usually funded for a period of two to five years. The process is roughly as follows;

• Our rector announces the amount of financial resources that are available for new initiatives for the coming year and which the central priorities are. The total amount is determined on the one hand by any changes in the resources allocated to KTH from the ministry of education and on the other hand by the amount set free by earlier initiatives that end. For 2016 45 MSEK where available for the whole of KTH.
• The ITM departments propose to the School which new initiatives they would like to see. Based on these proposals a rather transparent and open discussion and prioritization is taking place in the ITM management group. After this, a final prioritized list is defined as the ITM proposal to the rector. For 2016 ITM submitted a list with 17 different initiatives amounting to 10.3 MSEK for 2016 and 48.8 MSEK for the period 2016-2020.
• The rector’s office (rector, dean, accounting….) then goes through proposals from all the schools and comes back with a proposed operations contract for each school. What the rector proposed for ITM for 2016 is an exception in the sense that the proposal goes beyond what we expected. The allocation in the contract is 9.9 MSEK for 2016 and 41.1 MSEK for the period 2016-2020.

The list of funded initiatives is:

/Jan Wikander, Dean of School

Efficient internal communication is always a challenge. Too much information via inadequate channels are at the risk of being perceived only as disturbance. At the same time there is a challenge to keep the information flow going and to make sure that the information is up-to-date. Maybe the most difficult part is to guarantee that key information within a particular part of our operations, actually reaches the staff members that depend on having that information on time. This blog from the ITM management is to be kept up-to-date on a weekly basis covering general KTH and ITM news and up-dates. But more importantly key updates on basic education, research education, faculty development and administration will be provided directly by the persons in charge at the ITM level.

Impact on society should be seen as the ultimate goal of academic activities. A rather recent activity at KTH is focused both highlighting and improving our impact on society. In line with this, each KTH school has nominated a staff member to be coordinating the impact improvement work within the school but also at KTH at large by networking within the whole group of school coordinators. If you have ideas on this topic or good impact examples from you group or unit please take a contact with the ITM impact coordinator Hatef Madani at the department Energy technology.

Jan Wikander, Dean of School