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Update on situation at ITM

Dear colleagues,
First, I wish to thank all of you for your fine work, even though most of you have to carry out your tasks from home. It seems like we all have learned a new way of working. It seems so natural to have the meetings using Zoom today, so that many times I wonder why we did not use it more often.

Still, I wish to stress the importance of keeping yourself updated on the corona situation by reading www.kth.se/corona. As I mentioned before, the President has a crisis group that meet every day. Based on these meetings the website is being updated every day.

I also wish to share some information on what is going on:

  • The ITM management group meet officially every Tuesday between 15.00 – 17.00 in order to inform each other about the current situation and to make things work as smooth as possible.
  • The Learning department is working extra hard to be a support to all teachers needing to transform to the new situation. Currently there is also a focus on how to assist teachers in giving digital examinations in the upcoming Easter exam period. A very good news and example of how we collaborate during these times is that 15 other people from KTH have joined their efforts to help the Learning department to carry out these important tasks to assist KTH’s teachers.
  • The administration is working as usual, but we are using digital signatures to a greater extent, to speed up each case. I think all of you can see from your e-mails that the administration response to your requests fast.
  • The President has made a decision to move the RAE visit week to 2021 (week 34). In total 82 international and national experts are involved in this evaluation and it is too hard to carry out this big event as was planned to take place in August 2020. It should be noted that an internal review will take place during 2020, based on the information that already has been gathered by all researchers.

Finally, I again wish to thank all of you for trying to do your best working from your homes. This is a new situation for all of us and we need to find new ways to fulfil our duties at KTH.  Also, do not forget to get some fresh air during your breaks. The spring is slowly showing up and it is quite refreshing to get some sun and a nice walk in the nearby neighborhood.

/Pär Jönsson, Head of the ITM School

Welcome back to a new decade!

Dear colleagues, I hope that all of you had a relaxing and fun time with family and friends during the holidays!

All leaders at ITM will gather at the conference center Såstaholm during January 16 to 17 for our annual leadership conference. This year the first day will focus on gender aspects under the lead of our JMLA Professor Annika Borgenstam. This is a follow-up of the four-day education for our unit leaders that took place during 2019. However, we will now begin making specific plans on how to continue the work on gender and equal treatment issues in respective department. The second day of the conference is organized by our HR manager Anna Blendow. Here, specific examples of situations leaders can bump into will be presented, and we’ll work together on how to strengthen the leadership of the ITM leaders.

I also wish to mention that I met with some of the Health and Safety representatives at ITM on January 9. It was very interesting to discuss both what they have been working with as well as how we can improve the collaboration between them and the management at the departments and at ITM. Currently, ITM lacks representatives from the Departments of Materials Science and Engineering and the Department of Industrial Production. However, I know that the unions at KTH are working on finding representatives here. A person having this appointment will learn a lot from being involved in systematic environmental work, reorganizations, reconstructions, etc. In fact, such an appointment is very good for a person’s curriculum for example if the person has the intention to apply for leadership positions in the future. We need engaged personnel that contributes to collaborations at ITM.

This spring, the research evaluation RAE2020 will be in focus and involve most researchers at ITM. President Sigbritt Karlsson wishes that the departments focus on their future development plans and get a specific feedback on these plans from international and national experts, mostly from academia, but also from industry. Those of us that have participated in RAE2008 and RAE2012 know that it is a lot of work, but also very fun!

Illustration mirror with the text meet the person responsible for quality at ITM/KTHNow that we all are back to work we enter a new exciting time – we are entering a new decade. We do not exactly now what will happen but only that all of us will influence what happens here at ITM. The quality of ITM’s work dependent on the engagement from each and every one of us.

/Pär Jönsson, Head of the ITM School

New leadership at ITM and welcome back

Dear colleagues,
I wish to welcome you back from your vacations. I hope that all of you now have returned with an extra boost of energy so that you are ready to continue your work tasks in a successful manner!

As you all know by now, the President has initiated a process to select a new Head and Deputy Head of the ITM School. A committee consisting of participants from both KTH and ITM will be formed. The goal is to select the new leadership during the autumn so that they can start their positions in January 2020.

The President has appointed me as a Acting Head of School and Martin Törngren as the Deputy Head during the period of July 1 to December 31. Martin’s focus will be to lead an integrated research initiative that the ITM Management group has decided on earlier this year. I will let Martin explain more about this in his own blog.

My job will be to carry out the Head’s tasks in a similar way as was done by the previous one. This means, for example, that every second Tuesday I will meet the Head of Administration Christina Carlsson, the Director of First and Second Cycle Education (GA) Anna Jerbrant, the Director of Third Cycle Education (FA) Malin Selleby, and the Responsible for the research initiative Martin Törngren. The purpose with these meetings is mainly to prepare relevant questions that we will discuss in the ITM Management group, which also are held every second Tuesday. The Management group also consists of the Department Heads, the responsible for the faculty and a student representative.

I also wish to inform you about a couple of activities that will take place during the fall:

  • The salary negotiations between managers and employees will take place in September.
  • The quality system for the education at KTH will be evaluated. We will inform you more in detail later. Now we now that the dates for evaluations will be October 1 and November 25 to 28.
  • The preparations for the assessment of the research (RAE2020) will start. This event will take place late August 2020.

Pär Jönsson and his son in the Jededia Smith’s Redwood State Park Finally, I wish to share some of my summer activities. The most amazing thing I did during the vacation was the visit to Jededia Smith’s Redwood State Park, where a Star Wars movie was filmed. It is a fantastic feeling to take a walk in such a forest full of very tall trees that are more than 2000 years old. I strongly recommend a visit to a Redwood park if you get a chance!

/Pär Jönsson, Acting Head of School

Thank you and best wishes for the future!

First of all I would like to thank all of you for all the good work during my years as the Head of ITM – it has been a very interesting period, challenging at times, but overall very rewarding. I was overwhelmed by the celebration on May 14, all the participants, all the presents, all the songs, all the speeches and poems, and last but not least, the toastmaster. And the movie, what a remarkable production: the overall orchestration, the comfortable storyteller, the rejoicing chorus of happy administrators, and all the nice words from colleagues. Thank you all!

On the research side, coordinator pairs have now been appointed to lead the four new School overarching research initiatives for which the School has allocated dedicated research funding. The overall effort will be supervised by our new Deputy Head of School Martin Törngren. The areas and the coordinator teams are:

  • Industrial transformation through digitalisation, renewable energy and circular economy.
    Coordinated by Antonio Maffei, IIP and Elena Fersman, MMK.
  • Integrated mechanics, components and materials design including additive manufacturing.
    Coordinated by Greta Lindwall, MSE and Raquel Lizarraga, MSE.
  • Sustainable energy systems: Technical and business perspectives.
    Coordinated by Andrew Martin, EGI and Frauke Urban, Indek.
  • Innovation eco-systems, innovation management and entrepreneurship.
    Coordinated by Jennie Björk, MMK and Anders Broström, Indek.

I am sure that Martin Törngren will come back soon with a blog post with more details and strategies for these efforts.

Finally, I am convinced that the new School head team, Pär and Martin, will continue in a spirit of engagement, collaboration, innovation, equality, inclusion, good working climate, and most importantly environmental sustainability. In case the new management team runs into unforeseen challenges, I will leave some literature on my office desk that might be of help in tricky situations. A few example titles are:

  • Crisis management, Public Leadership under Pressure
  • Our Iceberg is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions
  • Organisatorisk resiliens – Vad är det som gör företag och organisationer livskraftiga?

Good luck Pär and Martin! And Pär, the gavel I handed over at the festivities, and which was once handed over to me by Bengt, might come in handy in critical situations.

I wish all the best for ITM in the future!

/Jan Wikander, retiring Head of the ITM School

 

2019 – A year of more substantial School initiatives than previous years

Do you want to date a robot?

Now what, has the dean gone crazy? No, actually not, it’s a teaser for Södertälje Science Week 30/1 -2/2. Apart from robot dating you can listen to interesting talks including also some prominent faculty members of ITM as speakers. Besides, I like robots.

We have closed the books for the financial year 2018 with a positive result of 26,1 MSEK (6 from education and 20 from research and research education). The total income amounts 773 MSEK which means a substantial increase since the previous year, the main reason being the integration of Department of Learning in Engineering Sciences. The positive result also means that the capital brought forward from 2018 is on the positive side again which is very good when it comes to discussions with the KTH management about new initiatives. The positive financial result on the research and research education side is to a large extent planned, and this plan is connected closely to the four thematic and interdepartmental areas mentioned in my last blog in December and to the fact a fair amount of resources was allocated to ITM during 2018 for strengthening research and competence build-up in gender and equality at KTH.

Last week we had – according to the ITM tradition – a two-day Leaders’ Conference targeting a larger part of ITM colleagues with leader roles. All leaders cannot be invited every year because it would be too many. We were some 40+ colleagues gathered at Såstaholm in Täby and this year the invitees were all unit leaders, support function managers, the ITM management team, the persons responsible for our doctoral program and finally our Grundutbildningsutskott. The three main topics discussed were:

  • How to prioritize and start implementing some of the many ambitious activities and objectives outlined in our development plan?
  • How to reach a more effective interplay between academic activities and support functions? Group works led by support function managers (Service centre, HR, Economy, Education support, Communication, EU project support) resulted in both concrete development ideas and fruitful discussions.
  • How should we increase the scientific impact (publication, citation) of our research activities? This is a prioritized topic at KTH and all schools are required to deliver plans and activities that lead to stronger impact, not the least for contributing to the ranking of KTH in a global context.

All these topics will now be taken forward within the School through our normal organisational structures but also through dedicated working groups and initiative leaders.

This was all for now!

/Jan

https://www.kth.se/aktuellt/nyheter/hallbar-framtid-ar-temat-for-sodertalje-science-week-1.870636