{"id":142,"date":"2025-04-23T11:53:06","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T09:53:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kth.se\/blogs\/sandra-di-rocco\/?p=142"},"modified":"2025-05-06T17:05:56","modified_gmt":"2025-05-06T15:05:56","slug":"the-global-race-for-talent-why-i-chose-sweden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kth.se\/blogs\/sandra-di-rocco\/2025\/04\/the-global-race-for-talent-why-i-chose-sweden\/","title":{"rendered":"The Global Race for Talent: Why I Chose Sweden"},"content":{"rendered":"

Academic mobility is a hot topic right now. Scholars often move in search of better conditions for conducting serious, meaningful work. Today, perhaps more than ever, talent retention and attraction are crucial issues. Countries are responding in various ways: some invest heavily to attract talent, while others focus on visibility and scale. What I believe is sometimes overlooked is the immense value of environments where research is still treated as something worth protecting.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For me, that place was Sweden.<\/p>\n

I first came to Sweden as a postdoc at the Mittag-Leffler Institute, one of the world\u2019s most respected research centers in mathematics,\u00a0a place where ideas breathe and fundamental, long-term research isn\u2019t just allowed, it\u2019s expected. From there, I spent a year in Germany and a couple of years in the U.S.\u00a0Then I returned to Sweden as faculty at KTH.<\/p>\n

Not because of the salary\u2014that\u2019s not Sweden\u2019s selling point. But what I found here was something that, to me, mattered more: a research culture with room to grow,<\/strong> a school system I (mostly) trust, and a social structure that makes academic life compatible with family life.<\/strong><\/p>\n

At KTH, I found something else, too: a truly international academic environment<\/strong>. Many of my colleagues come from outside Sweden. Diversity isn\u2019t just a statistic\u2014it shapes how we work, teach, and think. Even as someone who didn\u2019t grow up in this system, I\u2019ve been able to find my place\u2014and eventually became dean of the school. That says something about how open the environment can be.<\/p>\n

For those of us already at KTH, this is a reminder that what we create together,\u00a0through mentorship, collegiality, and the way we conduct research and education,\u00a0matters deeply. A welcoming and intellectually rich environment doesn\u2019t happen automatically. It\u2019s something we build, choice by choice, and it is one of our greatest assets in a global academic landscape.<\/span><\/p>\n

And beyond the institution, Sweden\u2019s approach to research is, so far, serious and steady. This is the country of the Nobel Prize, yes\u2014but also of long-term investment in science. Programs like those from the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsr\u00e5det) or the Wallenberg foundations offer stable, long-term research support, aiming also to attract talent from other countries.<\/p>\n

So, is it perfect? Of course not.<\/strong> But maybe that\u2019s not the point. For me, the real question was: what kind of academic life do we want to build?<\/p>\n

Sweden might not be on everyone\u2019s radar. But maybe it should be.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Academic mobility is a hot topic right now. Scholars often move in search of better conditions for conducting serious, meaningful work. Today, perhaps more than ever, talent retention and attraction are crucial issues. Countries are responding in various ways: some invest heavily to attract talent, while others focus on visibility and scale. What I believe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kth.se\/blogs\/sandra-di-rocco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kth.se\/blogs\/sandra-di-rocco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kth.se\/blogs\/sandra-di-rocco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kth.se\/blogs\/sandra-di-rocco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kth.se\/blogs\/sandra-di-rocco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kth.se\/blogs\/sandra-di-rocco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":143,"href":"https:\/\/www.kth.se\/blogs\/sandra-di-rocco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions\/143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kth.se\/blogs\/sandra-di-rocco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kth.se\/blogs\/sandra-di-rocco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kth.se\/blogs\/sandra-di-rocco\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}