From 1^st of January ITM includes a seventh department (Institutionen för lärande) and our Department of Sustainable Production (HPU) has now moved to the brand new campus in Södertälje. Without these promising changes and developments we would have been the smallest of the five new Schools. Now we are next to smallest. Although growth is not a target in itself, ITM will continue to grow over the coming years. There are mainly three facts/trends behind giving this growth forecast:

• The new HPU department is now “only” in its initial state. The department has a rather aggressive and challenging growth plan including the new education programs and the build-up of research groups around the three new professorships. One could say that we now have concluded phase one, and that the growth phase now starts.
• With rather in-depth arguments we have negotiated with KTH management in order to reach a higher ratio between state funding for research and state funding for education. In this respect we are in the same league as the ABE School but very far from the other three schools. (see my last blog). These negotiations have now resulted in two things: i) Additional temporary (3-year) funding to reach a better balance and ii) partly led to the fact that KTH will investigate and redesign the principles for how the state funding is distributed between the schools.
• Thanks to a very active faculty, we see during the last four years a stable increase in external funding achieved in hard competition, both nationally and internationally.

We have now closed the books for 2017 and we conclude that out economy is in balance. Total income is 591 MSEK and total cost is 591 MSEK. Education is around -1.5 MSEK and research is around +1,5 MSEK. Although the Scholl overall is in balance some departments are in a little less fortunate situation and the School will be working hard to improve this during 2018.

Finally, please note the Science week between January 31 and February 4 in connection with the inauguration of our new campus in Södertälje. The whole week is full if exciting activities and seminars. Here are just a few examples of the more than 25 topics covered:

• Open house in the new premises – come and have look!
• Cyberphysical systems in logistics and production!
• Smart factories in Korea and Sweden!
• KTH-Lean: Leadership, holistic workflows and systematic improvements!
• On the way to heavy vehicle platooning!
• VR-glasses and GO-PRO in pharmaceutical production!
• Last but not least Kristina Palm and the undersigned will explain how we, together with colleagues, made it all happen!

You find the full program here.

I wish you all a rewarding 2018,

Jan Wikander, Head of School

In week five next year KTH inaugurates together with Södertälje Science Park a brand new campus for our Department of Sustainable Production. The whole week is full if exciting activities and seminars. Here are just a few examples of the more than 25 topics covered:

• Open house in the new premises – come and have look!
• Cyberphysical systems in logistics and production!
• Smart factories in Korea and Sweden!
• KTH-Lean: Leadership, holistic workflows and systematic improvements!
• On the way to heavy vehicle platooning!
• VR-glasses and GO-PRO in pharmaceutical production!
• Last but not least Kristina Palm and the undersigned will explain how we, together with colleagues, made it all happen!

You find the full program here

Every year during the fall there is a process of “negotiations” between the KTH schools and the KTH president. This year it has been a bit different from previous years, the reason being that we have a new president and after 1^st of January we have a new organisation with five instead of ten schools. Based on this ITM has analysed how we perform and how we are funded in comparison to the other four schools. This has led to the following conclusion which we have submitted together with a comprehensive analysis and more concrete areas where we need more resources:

“The ITM School has the lowest base funding (fofu-medel) of all schools. ITM performs better than the KTH average in terms of PhD graduation. ITM performs as good as the KTH average in terms of attracting external funding (where we now see an increasing trend and expect to perform better than the KTH average from this year on). ITM succeeds in this despite the fact that we deliver a huge education volume in relation to our limited base funding. The conclusion is that our base funding (fofu-medel) must increase substantially through a specific president’s strategy in order for the current School management to take continued responsibility for the Schools positive development on par with the other schools”.

On Wednesday, December 13, we have the next negotiation meeting with our president. If the meeting is successful we will be close to a finalized activity contract, if not the discussions will continue….

Finally, I wish all personnel, guests and scholarship holders a very nice and rewarding Christmas holiday!

Jan Wikander, Dean of School