Category: Dagens leder

I have now been Head of Department at bio for a week. I looked very much forward to start, and I have not been disappointed. On the contrary. I have received a very warm welcome, and I already now see that bio consist of a large group of highly motivated employees and I see that we have many exciting activities both with research and education, and not the least innovation. We are the largest, and in my opinion, most important, department at the University of Bergen. We generate knowledge and innovations that are crucial for the development of society, both locally, nationally and globally. Bio is relevant and we deliver! It makes me humble to think about the large responsibility that follows my position. And I see a great potential for bio to contribute even stronger in the future to solve the large societal challenges ahead of us, through its strong education and research activities, both within basic and applied biology.

I am even more motivated for the job now than I was when I accepted the offer. That is a good sign, and a result of all I have learned and experienced during the last weeks. I will have to spend a lot of time ahead to gain more insight into the scientific areas of bio and its routines. The most important for me will nevertheless be to get to know all of you better. My basic philosophy as head of department is that we work best as a team when we stand united, respect each others scientific areas, personalities, challenges, ambitions and dreams. I will therefore spend as much time as possible in the future to get to know you, so please stop me in the hallway and tell me what you are doing today, come to my office and tell me what occupies you and about your latest triumph. Invite me to scientific or strategic discussions. Don’t be afraid to contact me.

Everything can be improved, and I wouldn`t have done my job properly if I didn’t do what I can to get bio to work even better than today. Such processes, whether they are about working conditions, external financing, bio`s economy, supervision of PhD students, organizing of bio`s research groups, to mention a few, have to be conducted in close dialogue with all that are relevant. Many heads think better than one, and bio is completely depending on the involvement from all of us to find the best solutions.

I have, without doubt, my errors and shortcomings. I can think too loud, say the wrong things at the wrong time, be to short-thinked, or long-thinked, make decisions on a too weak foundation, I am confused, I talk to much and for too long, and surely have many other limitations. Don`t be afraid to tell me if you think I am wrong. Don`t be frustrated over long without telling me. I need constructive inputs, so that I also can improve in my job.

I am proud of being head of department at bio. I should not take the honor of anything, it should be brotherly and sisterly divided among all of you when we achieve successes, whether they are small or large. We shall celebrate each other, across scientific areas and area of work. I want us to be a team, at all levels, from how we are organized and works administratively, how we achieve groundbreaking scientific results, and how we educate even better and more knowledgeable students. I look forward to the continuation together with all at bio.

Ørjan

Another lovely but busy early summer week nearing its close. It is the time of master exams and disputations at the department, and many small and big things must be coordinated. Fortunately BIO has talented people in every position who makes this glide smoothly and without pain. Yesterday was especially busy for my part, with leader meeting in the morning, end of term celebration for lunch, opening of the NMR facility in the Workshop Building in the afternoon, and summer dinner with faculty in Knut Fægris house in the evening. Hectic but enjoyable. Thanks for all the gifts, fine words and a brilliant event with bubbles and tapas in the Japanese garden! Special thanks to Nina, Eva, Rebecca, Ingunn, Synnøve og Lise who organized the great event.

Then we must congratulate Jeppe Kolding with promotion to full professor, with effect from September 2015. Well deserved! The Faculty Board also decided to appoint Ida Helene Steen as associate professor in geomicrobiologi. Congratulations and welcome, Ida! Welcome also to Ståle Ellingsen, who has accepted the position as associate professor in fish anatomy.

Somewhat more worrying is it that the Faculty Board adopted a statement which may result in further centralization of administrative functions already in the September meeting, long before both the Scenario 2030 group has concluded and before the new HR organization at the faculty has been evaluated. This would then be contrary to the wishes of most groups, who points out that the overall structure should find its form before making other organizational changes. What’s the rush?

This week’s level 2 publication is an article about stickleback ecological adaptations in BMC Evolutionary Biology with Tom Olav Klepaker as coauthor. Congratulations!

Regards Anders

By the deadline of the Research Council of Norway 25th of May, 1731 applications had been submitted. Of these, 1271 went to the FRIPRO programme. From BIO, 19 applications were submitted to FRIPRO, of these 12 researcher applications, three mobility stipends and two Young Research Talent applications. In addition, four applications were sent to KLIMAFORSK, three to INTPART, and one to the UTNAM programme. As usual, EECRG is the most active research group, coordinating 10 applications.

This year we have tried a new model, where the applicants have been invited to present their ideas for each other and for a panel of BIO’s more experienced scientists, who have also read the applications and given advice on the project descriptions. We hope and believe that this has improved the quality of the applications sent by the deadline, and that more projects will succeed in getting through the eye of the needle.

It isn’t the number that counts, in fact. And maybe these fixed deadlines are contributing to the generation of more half-good applications, and hence more waste of time, both for the scientists and the evaluation panel, than necessary. An attempt by the National Science Foundation in USA to get rid of the enormous heaps of applications at certain times of the year indicates that it is so.

Since NSF introduced open deadlines for some of its programmes in 2011, the number of applications has been halved. It can seem like it is the half-motivated and sloppy prepared applications that disappear, while the good applications are improved through better preparation and time for polishing.

Another advantage with open deadlines is that fixed deadlines always seem to fit poorly for most people, and especially for university scientists. The May deadline comes at the time of exams and submission of master theses. The September deadline comes just after semester start, student receptions, and is often written at the time when foreign collaborators have their holiday.

Maybe time to skip deadlines also for the Research Council?

Monday this week the Norwegian Ocean Laboratory was opened at Marineholmen. Both rector Dag Rune Olsen, IMR director Sissel Rogne, and Prime Minister Erna Solberg were present when it was also announced that the KG Jebsen Foundation will fund a KG Jebsen Center for Deep Ocean Research, lead by Rolf Birger Pedersen at CGB, and with our own Hans Tore Rapp on the team. Congratulations to everyone involved!

Congratulations also to Richard Telford and coauthors on a level 2 publication in Quaternary Science Reviews.

Hilsen Anders

While a well-known mathematics professor is sailing around the world, and in the newspaper columns, the Nordic Media Days are organized these days in Bergen. Among other things, people’s media habits have been investigated through the annual Media survey. From this it appears that the public’s trust in media has been decreasing lately. At the same time, cellulose-based newspapers struggle with their income, when the young generation with more digital media habits enters adulthood.

It is a while since BIO-info came out on paper. The last years our annual newsletter has been distributed as a pdf link. Starting this winter we have moved to a blog based edition, making it much simpler for us to edit stories and publish useful information for BIO employees and others who want to be informed about what is going on. In this way we also avoid spamming everyone with e-mails every time important things that we need to inform about appear. At the same time, two energetic PhD fellows contribute with editing, and thereby obtain both media training and useful acitvity in their compulsory work hours.

We have received positive feed-back on this transition. I am still a bit concerned that the new format doesn’t reach out as well as before. Some people note that the blog format doesn’t give the same oversight as the linear pdf format. It takes some clicking to get into the different topics, and clicking may lead to loosing the thread and not finding your way back to where you started. We also experience that information isn’t received as well as it used to do.

When the new BIO-info now starts to settle, it may be time for our own little survey of media habits. Thus we can find out what we can do better to make sure that everyone gets the information that can be found in BIO-info’s boxes and columns. Anyone with ideas or suggestions are welcome to send them to the editorial office.

A scientific journal in biology that has been digital since its incetion, and which over just a couple of years has established itself as a well recognized and respected journal, is eLife. Even though eLife itself is critical to the of an impact factor as a measure of scientific quality, the journal has in a short time approached an IF of 10. eLife is still at level 1 in the Norwegian system, but this is deemd to change now that Norwegian scientists start to discover the journal. The last in this regard is Arild Folkvord, who together with colleagues from among other places Uppsala, has mapped the herring genome and its importance for ecological adaptations. Congratulations to Arild!

Referring to the afore-mentioned mathematics professor, we are obviously many who were surprised to the way the University leadership presented a sailing professor as a normal and wanted way to be employed. It mus be obvious that the normal situation we want is faculty members who are present at the department and the institution and contribute to the scientific environment through research, discussions and smalltalk, supervision, outreach and teaching. And then of course we expect our staff to travel and visit other scientific environments, participate at conferences and contribute with guest lectures and courses. The work efforts of a professor is counted in many more ways than the number of articles published alone.

Happy 17. May!

Hilsen Anders