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On May 9, Sigbritt and Mikael visited the School of Industrial Engineering and Management (ITM). The day began in Södertälje and ended in the M block.
In anticipation of the visit, the Dean of School had recorded video greeting welcoming Sigbritt and Mikael and outlining the strategic initiatives ITM aims to accomplish before 2019, as well as school-specific investment needs.
The Dean of School presented the necessary and quality-driven expansion of the school’s research. The intention is that this expansion will occur within three or four main categories:
- Research and educational infrastructure
- Strategic research areas
- Circular economy
- Industrial digitization for sustainability and innovation
- Energy-efficient industry
- Advanced manufacturing
- Carbon dioxide-free metal production
- New research centers
- MERIT – Critical edge computing for industrial application
- Mechanics and materials design
- Live-in-Lab
- Basic support for potential KIC Manufacturing
- Department-specific focus areas
The day began in Södertälje, at the Department of Sustainable Production Development. In preparation for a little surprise later in the day, Sigbritt received a full-body scan upon arrival. One of the issues discussed in the course of the morning was “the challenge of making KTH Södertälje better known to the outside world.”
Thereafter, Sigbritt and Mikael continued to Campus Valhallavägen, where they were greeted by members of the school leadership. The school’s heads of department had recorded a video presenting each department’s vision and outlining challenges to achieving their objectives.
The heads of department and the departments’ video recordings were uploaded to Canvas as a course date, and Sigbritt was enrolled as a student. We watched the videos together, and discussed the departments’ various visions and challenges.
After this, service center staff arrived in electric cars and drove Sigbritt and Mikael up to the departments of Production Engineering, Machine Design, and Energy Technology. There they visited the Machine Design and Industrial Production prototype labs. Sigbritt also received her surprise: a “small mini-Sigbritt” made of various materials and based on the scan that had been made that morning. The visit ended with a visit to EGI and its Solar Lab facility.
After all this, the tired crowd of colleagues headed home to enjoy the long weekend.
The school leadership was very happy and proud to have had the opportunity to showcase ITM over the course of an entire day and to communicate the school’s vision and challenges.
Everyone at ITM hopes that Sigbritt and Mikael also enjoyed the day.
/Christina Carlsson, Head of Administration
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A Wednesday and Thursday in April we had the annual ITM PhD student conference at Skogshem and Wijk on Lindingö. The theme this year was Research skills from different perspectives. Linda Söderlindh gave a very inspiring combined lecture/workshop on Presentation skills (see picture). Greta Quesada Richardson & Margareta Fathli informed us about Open Access publishing. In the evening before a very nice dinner, there was a poster session with the goal to bridge the gap between different research fields i.e. find a PhD student colleague in another area where there is some overlap in interest. This year Linda gave feedback on the posters to as many students as she could.
The second day started with an open-air quiz led by Andrea de Giorgio from the THS PhD Chapter. On the picture below the participants try to form a square of a string that they all hold on to. Not so easy since they have to keep their eyes shut and only orally communicate how the problem should be solved.
After the outdoor activity Mats Magnusson (PA for the Machine Design Doctoral Program) gave a short presentation about the recent survey, the result was quite similar to last year´s. We will now look into the result in more detail. The last lecture was given by Sven Ove Hansson, Ethics in research, a subject that is always highly relevant and interesting.
Thank you all lecturers, PAs and participants!
/ Malin Selleby, FA
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The main focus for the strategic education development work at ITM-school right now is to identify, formulate and discuss the educational parts of the development plan. This work will be executed during May through two workshops (on May 8th and May 29th ), and if anyone is interested in participating in these please send an e-mail to me anna.jerbrant@indek.kth.se.
Besides that, we also have a number of more operational issues to work with, for instance regarding the master and batchelor thesis projects (that are coming to an end in May/June) as well as discussions about the results of this year’s admission of new students to our programs.
Beyond this, I hope you’ve seen the interesting article in Campi regarding the so called PriU-groups? The initiation of these groups is based on a need to strengthen the collegial influence within the decision making focused on KTHs education. The purpose of the PriU-groups (that where initiated at the beginning of last year) are to gather faculty with educational responsibility in order to find new perspectives and solutions for a lot of different kind of problems. The organizers of the PriU-groups have (since April) made sure that the groups are open to all staff – teachers and administrators – who feel committed and want to be involved and change our education. The aim is to strengthen the quality of education, by taking advantage of more of the expertise within the entire KTH organization, and therefore groups focus on everything from digitization and internationalization to working life and practical issues such as premises, schedules and planning. Read more about it in Campi.
In Campi you can also read about the new manual that KTH has provided that is focused on how teachers can achieve the best effect when making filmed lectures online. The interest in e-learning has increased significantly during the last couple of years, largely due to KTH’s initiative on MOOCs, massive open online courses, which has enabled that a large number of lecture videos has been produced. Jonas Thorén, at KTH’s media department, who produced many of the films, has therefore produced a handbook with the purpose to help teachers with presentation design and video production. Very interesting! If you want to read more about it go to Campi.
/ Anna Jerbrant, GA
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The external revision of KTH and ITM to determine if we meet the environmental standards described in the Swedish standard ISO 14001 took place on April 16-20, for the ITM school. At the end of the revision week, it was clear that KTH passed the revision. I cannot refer to the whole document, but I wish to share some good examples from ITM that was highlighted in the revision document:
- Minor field studies in the education, especially at INDEK (Anna Jerbrant)
- Movie on “not another brick in the wall” illustrating the production of bricks and gases from landfill waste (New Mine – Weihong Yang project leader)
- Digital information in form of youtube movies by, for example, Mikael Ersson
- Documentation of impact of projects leading to an improved sustainability (Adde Jeihouni and Charlotte Flodin )
Many people were involved in the work with the external revision, but I especially wish to thank Adde Jeihouni and Charlotte Flodin, who were responsible for the preparation and administrated of the ITM revision work. They did it in an excellent manner!
As I have discussed before, new Docents are important for ITM since they increase the number of people that can act as main supervisors.
Pavel Ramirex Lopez from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering has become a Docent in Casting. On Friday April 13 he held a Docent presentation entitled “Casting Research at Swerea MEFOS: Past Activities, Present Challenges and Future Perspectives”. The audience were close to 70 people, since it was held in connection to department meeting organized by the Department Head Annika Borgenstam. Docent Ramirez is employed by Swerea-Mefos, but after becoming a Docent he will participate in both research and teaching at KTH.
Pernilla Ulfvengren from the Department of Industrial Economics and Management has become a Docent in industrial technology focusing on socio-technological systems. On Friday April 20 she held a Docent presentation entitled “Safety and change in sociotechnical systems”. The audience were 20 people mainly from the department.
Finally, I want to say that it was marvelous to finally get some sunny weather. I hurried up to plant potatoes in buckets and two new cherry trees in the ground. I could not wait any longer for the spring to come, after this long and cold winter!
Pär Jönsson, Vice Head of School
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The event was marked with balloons and loads of sweets.
It has been an eventful year – starting up an entirely new function, with no experience, and without really knowing what needs existed out in the operation. And this had to be done in parallel with recruiting new personnel. It’s no understatement to say that there were some significant fluctuations during the first few months.
But a year has now passed. Our employees, who were newly recruited at the time, now have a whole year of experience. They have got to know KTH and its structure to some extent, and have become familiar with our departments, their employees and their needs.
At times, running support activities is more about setbacks than successes. You need openness, dialogue and the ability to accept success and cope with adversity. To be able to handle situations in a professional manner, to persevere and to focus on solutions.
Annika Lilja and her colleagues have managed all of this with willpower. A huge thank you to everyone!
If you have not yet discovered how the Service Center can help you:
- Register and archiving
- Dissertation and licentiate
- Purchasing and procurement
- Catering
- Conferences
- Conference rooms & booking
- Keys and key cards
- Post, parcels and couriers
- Travel
- Success in the kitchen, print room & conference room
- Caretaking
The Service Center is your point of access to support and assistance at the ITM school. You can contact the Center at any time if you have questions or to report faults of any kind.
The school’s offices are open Mon-Fri 8.30 am to 4.30 pm (except holidays and bridge days). All matters can be sent to service@itm.se.
If you have not yet been in contact with the Service Center, we hope to be able to help you in future too!
If you are already using the Service Center’s resources, we are always happy to receive any suggestions you may have for improvements. Without this feedback, we have nothing to work towards. If you have any suggestions for improvements, please send them to Annika Lilja, anlil@kth.se. I am convinced that she and her colleagues will do everything they can to help you!
Take care!
/Christina Carlsson, Head of Administration
