Being FA (director of 3rd cycle studies) and professor means that my schedule is usually quite dense. Last week me and my PhD-student Sedi, organized a small international workshop dedicated to the development of a new generation of thermodynamic data for the elements – clearly an activity that had very little to do with being FA. Fortunately, since mid-September I have a vice FA, Rahmatollah Khodabandeh. Rahmat is an associate professor at the Department of Energy Technology and we now share the duties as FA. We have divided the work such that Rahmat takes care of the students in the doctoral programs Energy & Environmental systems (EGI), Production Engineering (IIP), Machine Design (MMK) and I take care of Industrial Economics & Management (Indek) and Engineering Materials Science (MSE). Rahmat will update the ITM home page concerning doctoral studies and I take care of the rest of the work e.g. the annual PhD-student conference.
The PhD-student conference is an annual lunch to lunch conference for the PhD students at ITM with priority given to new students. Every year there is a specific theme, 2015 it was Gender Equality and Diversity. Prof. Anna Wahl was invited to talk about gender and diversity in organizations and Pelle Axnäs’ theater group gave a much appreciated interactive performance on the same theme. It was entertaining but had serious undertones and both the talk and the performance initiated very interesting discussions. The students that participated seemed to appreciate the conference and its theme and it was suggested that the theme should be fixed to gender equality and diversity since it is an important issue that concerns us all. Does this seem like a good idea?
/ Malin (FA)