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An interesting period to come

Yesterday there was an award ceremony to thank our president Peter Gudmundson for his 9 years at the rudder of KTH. Labans Hage – the small area between Brinellvägen 8 and 10 – was renamed in Peter’s honour to Peters Hage, and a nice piece of art was installed reflecting Peter’s background as an elite ice-hockey player.

The first KTH Management group meeting with our new president Sigbritt Karlsson takes place on Monday afternoon. She has already announced that her ambition is to have more of strategic discussions at those meeting, and little less of just unilateral information flow. Information can be passed on more efficiently by other means, she says. The topic of discussion at this first meeting will be the “conditions and situation for young researchers”. And the corresponding background material is:

Early-career researchers need fewer burdens and more support and
Young scientists under pressure: what the data show

Another topic that our new president most likely will bring to the table is a new development plan for KTH from 2018 and onwards. For ITM, this topic will be one of the main points of discussion at the annual ITM leader’s conference which takes place January 11-12. The KTH and School development plans 2013-2016 were extended with one year due to the change of presidents. For ITM we made only minor changes to the previous plan except for a new section entitled Specific initiatives which covers a number of new strategic School initiatives which have resulted from, and been developed under, the ITM Academic Development Plan 2013‐2016. You find this plan under our intranet pages.

On Wednesday this week we had the last formal discussion with the former (by Monday) president, and this ended up in a signed ITM Activity contract (Verksamhetsuppdrag) for 2017. After some rather tough negotiations we managed to almost reach the targeted level for new initiatives (faculty positions) while preserving the funding for some “extraordinary initiatives” which we have negotiated during the year. Examples of those are cash funding for PMH and extra faculty funding during the build-up period at our Södertälje campus.

As we all have noticed, the winter is here and I hope for a cross country première during the weekend! Physical exercise in any form is good for us, so please check out the ITM Wellness activities and the ITM Calendar on our intranet.

/ Jan Wikander
Dean of School

Summer vacations are approaching…

… with some good news. Already in my last blog post we celebrated a prestigious research contract with SFF in the area of material science. Now it is time to celebrate the next: our VINNEX centre Hero-m, also in the area of material science, has succeeded in securing an additional five years of substantial funding in very tough competition. Hero-m is successfully led by professor Annika Borgenstam. It was also very timely that our developments in Södertälje have been successfully strengthened by the fact that we are now a partner in the VINNEX centre HELIX hosted by Linköping University. HELIX and Hero-m are two of the total of five VINNEX centres that were granted five years continuation. Finally, we should highlight that the CECIS centre at INDEK is a partner in a new Mistra funded research program on how financial markets and actors can contribute to sustainable societal development. The program – Mistra Financial Systems – is led by Handelshögskolan and operated in collaboration with national as well as international partners. Professor Hans Lööf is responsible from the ITM-side.

There are probably several other initiatives that are worth celebrating, so please give me a hint…

Some departments are expanding. Right now the most urgent need is to find extra space for the departments of Energy Technology and Production Engineering. The solution to this is that our education administration office (utbildningskansliet) will move from Brinellvägen 68 to Lindstedtsvägen 3, level 6. The move will take place during the summer, so from August 1st the office is fully functional at the new location. But don’t worry, Expnord will remain at its current location and continue its development.

Another change about to happen within our educational system is that the organisation for how we manage and operate our education programs will be reshaped. The current way of operating has been more or less the same for many years despite the fact the education program structure has changed with BSc degrees, master programs and an extensive internationalization and thereby has become a lot more complex. The ambition with the new structure is to achieve a more transparent way operation, a better integration and communication between the program dimension and line organization, and more clear delegations and responsibilities for the different academic and administrative roles within education.

In the last Research Assessment Exercise (RAE2012) the ITM School achieved reasonably good results. A point that was made by one of the review panels was that we could gain a lot by better integration over department borders. In particular this was pointed out between the departments of Production Engineering and Machine Design. This, together with urgent needs on the one hand from department expansions, and on the other hand from needs of our education programs, have triggered a recently started project to modernize our premises at Valhallavägen. Sofia Ritzén coordinates this but more concretely the project is operated by KTH MBA and White Arkitekter.

Last, but certainly not least, have very nice summer vacation!

Jan Wikander, dean, the last blogger of the spring semester, but stay tuned, we will be back!

Substantial new funding to Material Science and a KTH initiative on circular economy

First and foremost we should congratulate Professor John Ågren and the MSE Department for the new research contract with SSF. The title of the funded project is “Sintring av inhomogena strukturer för förbättrad prestanda” and the total project budget is 31 million SEK. Congratulations!

KTH takes now a number of integrated initiatives that go across department and school borders. The funding of those initiatives comes from KTH balanced capital which over the last few years has accumulated a bit more than necessary. The ITM School hosts one of these initiatives – namely the one on Circular economy (CE), a concept which recently has caught a lot of interest because it focuses sustainable development issues in a business context. The European Commission is investing (in a broad sense) remarkably in circular economy (e.g. € 650 million in Horizon 2020 and € 5.5 billion under the structural funds). Essentially, the focus of circular economy is twofold:

  1. To close the materials cycle in a business system with reuse and recycling of products, components and materials for increasing resource efficiency and reducing environmental impact.
  2. To replace an industrial logic in which the basic principle is that materials and labour are priced, with another logic in which the function and benefit to the customer is the basis for value and pricing.

The KTH (or ITM if you wish) initiative on CE has an overall budget of 22 million SEK if we include the assistant professorship on Resource efficient business models for recycling of materials (one of the 12 prestigious assistant professorships that KTH announced more than a year ago) to which ITM recently has appointed Andreas Feldmann at the Department of Industrial Economics and Management – Congratulations Andreas! The goal of our CE initiative is that KTH during the time of the four-year funding period will establish a centre-like structure with substantial external funding for research and that corresponding education activities have been established.  The initiative includes also the CHE, ABE and CSC Schools but is led and coordinated by ITM.

In my last blog the ITM Core Values were given in Swedish, and an English translation was promised to come, and here it is:

ITM’s Core Values

The ITM School has a value system based on

  • democracy, equality, human rights and freedom, free speech and open discussion. Gender equality and rejection of all forms of discrimination raises both the quality of our institution and our working environment, and is therefore an integral part of ITM’s core values.
  • equal treatment in terms of rights, conditions, opportunities and obligations, regardless of ethnicity, nationality, gender, gender identity or expression, religion or belief, disability, social background, sexual orientation or age.

Important corner-stones for ITM’s continued development are

  • that diversity, equality and equal treatment are important in order to develop ITM as an attractive and successful workplace where everyone is given opportunities to develop and to contribute to good results.
  • that education and research can and should contribute to better living conditions and a peaceful society, and meet the requirements of ecological, social and economic sustainability. As part of a leading technical university, the ITM School has a special responsibility to develop the knowledge needed to promote such sustainable development.

Jan Wikander, Dean of School

The ITM basic values, a new education program, a new kind of centre

Two weeks ago ITM handed in our application for a new BSc in Engineering program to the Faculty council. This new program within the area of industrial maintenance and reliability is the second new program to be established as a result of our extensive developments in Södertälje. The final naming of the program is not decided yet but is investigated by an external consultancy bureau through an extensive survey to high-school students in Sweden. The idea is of course to find a name which attracts youngsters – both women and men – and which describes the program content in a fair and true way.

Another exciting development is the establishment of a new type applied research centre in cooperation with Fraunhofer in Germany and RISE – Research Institutes of Sweden. This new centre will initially be hosted by the Department of Production Engineering but is supposed to create links also to other departments of ITM. The short name is PMH Application Lab and the full name is Powertrain Manufacturing for Heavy Vehicles Application Lab. The basic idea is to engage with Fraunhofer and RISE to establish an applied research centre similar to how Fraunhofer operates in Germany with close links and extensive mobility between the institute and the hosting university. We also believe that this centre will strengthen our position as a European research partner. The particular topic of powertrain manufacturing is of course related to the fact that the Mälardalen region represents about 10% of the total world-wide production of heavy vehicle powertrains.

As announced in my last blog, ITM held last week the annual leadership conference with about 50 participants. Among a number of interesting topics the whole leadership agreed on the ITM basic values. These values are given below (in Swedish) and will soon be translated also to English and published on our intranet.

ITM:s värdegrund

ITM har en värdegrund baserad på

  • demokrati, människors lika värde, mänskliga fri- och rättigheter samt en fri och öppen diskussion. Jämställdhet mellan kvinnor och män samt avståndstagande från alla former av diskriminering är både en kvalitetsfråga och en arbetsmiljöfråga, och därmed en självklar del av ITM:s värdegrund.
  • likabehandling när det gäller rättigheter, villkor, möjligheter och skyldigheter oavsett etnisk tillhörighet, nationalitet, kön, könsidentitet eller könsuttryck, religion eller annan trosuppfattning, funktionsnedsättning, social bakgrund, sexuell läggning eller ålder.

En viktig utgångspunkt för ITM:s fortsatta utveckling är

  • övertygelsen att mångfald, jämställdhet och likabehandling är viktigt för att utveckla ITM till en attraktiv och framgångsrik arbetsplats där alla ges förutsättningar att utvecklas och bidra till goda resultat.
  • övertygelsen att utbildning och forskning kan och ska bidra till bättre levnadsbetingelser och till en fredlig samhällsutveckling som uppfyller kraven om ekologisk, social och ekonomisk hållbarhet. Som ingående i ett tekniskt universitet har ITM ett särskilt ansvar för att utveckla kunskap som behövs för att främja en sådan hållbar utveckling.

/Jan Wikander, Dean of School

A milestone to be reached this week!

I was about to dedicate this blog piece to the fact that the team behind the development of our campus in Södertälje will reach a major milestone this week, but I did not need to because our president has already highlighted it! See the president’s letter. A few names are mentioned in the weekly president’s letter but all who have been somehow involved in the developments – not the least the staff members of TMT – should feel that they are part of the timely and professional but sometimes rather challenging process of reaching the first major milestone. There are more milestones to come, so let us continue the development in the same constructive and professional manner, and let us have fun while doing it!

Next year, the KTH main campus will celebrate its 100 year anniversary. As part of the celebrations KTH is now looking for major or exciting or unusual events or happenings that will take place during 2017, and hence candidates for being part of the celebrations. If you know about such things that are worth celebrating please inform Annika Lilja. Besides the KTH celebrations, ITM will in 2017 also celebrate the birth and inauguration of the new campus in Södertälje.

The annual ITM leadership conference takes place March 17-18. This year the conference gathers unit leaders, directors of studies, doctoral program directors, centre/SFO managers, impact leader, heads of department, administrative function managers, and school management. Altogether we will be around 50 people concentrating on issues of strategic importance for developing our academic environment, for improving quality, and for discussing longer term strategies towards the societal impact that we would like to see. One core topic this year will be ITM core values, gender equality, diversity and equal treatment.

Not all KTH schools produce an annual activity report, but ITM does. From last year we also decided to use the annual report more actively as an instrument for our external communications. Most importantly we distribute it to PhD and faculty alumni, but also to strategic partners and funding bodies. Please inform ITM Communication with name and address to external people that you think are of strategic importance to your academic activities.

Last but not least, if you are an ITM PhD student, don’t forget to register for ITM PhD candidate conference 2016.

Jan Wikander, Dean