The current office of the Dean is entering its final year
Happy New Year 2022! This marks my final year as Dean, together with my brilliant and talented Pro-Deans and Vice-Deans and supported by the experienced managers at the departments and NCMM, as well as the skilled administration at the Faculty and the units.
We cannot ignore the fact that the management of the COVID-19 situation has drawn a lot of attention away from other important matters for nearly two years now. Despite this, we still believe that we are on track when it comes to most things.
Archives to be centralised
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the employees at the section archive, which will be part of the central archives at the University of Oslo from the start of this year. We are pleased to know that we will continue to receive the same excellent support from this team when it moves to the new central archives. Thank you for your dedicated efforts so far! Read more about the relocation of the archives.
Working environment
The ARK survey will be issued on 31 January. I would like to encourage all managers and employees to do everything to support and respond to the survey. ARK is a crucial tool when it comes to achieving the goals of the Faculty being an innovative organisation and an attractive place to work and study. Read more on the web pages about Working environment and working climate surveys at MED and in the news article from the last MED News before Christmas.
The COVID-19 situation
We continue to follow the recommendations from the government and the University. The Faculty management understands that the continued working from home recommendations and restrictions are testing the patience of many. However, we are still glad that the University of Oslo has not yet been formally closed down. We hope and believe that the University of Oslo will remain open until the other COVID-19 measures are scaled back. We ask all staff and students to keep up to date with information from the Faculty on our website for information about coronavirus outbreaks. Many people have been feeling lonely due to the limited social opportunities during the pandemic and we would like to encourage you all to look after one another while the pandemic continues.
Studies
The new year group in medical studies started their digital sessions back on 4 January. The Dean of Studies Elin Olaug Rosvold and I are both impressed with and grateful for the digital programme for the new students that the organising committee for the buddy scheme, with the head of the scheme Vetle André Wenger at the helm, has managed to put into place in a short period of time. Students who request it also have the opportunity to meet their buddy group in person. Teaching will be digital for most bachelor’s and master’s programmes in the coming weeks. For study programmes in medicine and clinical nutrition, the goal is to maintain clinical teaching, skills training and practical courses, but all other teaching will be digital until 30 January at the very least.
We look forward to starting to implement the quality promise in the 2024 programme description for medicine as soon as the pandemic permits. The planning will commence this January. The planning of Campus South is also well under way, with the launch scheduled for the autumn of 2023. This spring, we will also look at how we can improve teaching of medicine. We carried out a similar review of teaching for bachelor’s and master’s students last year. Medicine is up next and there is a particular focus on teaching roles.
The Faculty’s Centre of Excellence in Education (SHE) is, as mentioned in the 2021 summary in last year’s Christmas greetings from the Faculty Management, well under way. The centre has exciting plans in place for 2022. The centre’s plans include an antibiotic resistance initiative managed by our new visiting professor, Professor Sundeep Sahay, the development of a major new electronic database on medical documents for use in teaching and research and collaboration with the university alliance Circle U on the development of new programmes of study.
Research
We are starting the year by establishing new hosts for the Scientia Fellows II programme, which is set to announce another round now for the new year. This will be the fifth and final extra bonus call. We would like to encourage our academic staff to participate in this final round. The programme will then have part-funded more than 80 doctoral research fellows at the Faculty. I would like to remind everyone that 19 January is the final chance to register as a Scientia Fellows host. Link to information and registration here.
The Dean of Research, Jens Petter Berg, and I are proud of everything our researchers at MED achieve. They succeed in the strong national and international competition for research funding and publish works that break new ground in research. The discontinuation of the gift aid scheme has affected us greatly and it has unfortunately not been possible to establish any form of compensation.
Just before Christmas, we were informed that two new research centres would be established for the clinical treatment of cancer and rheumatism in Oslo. The Faculty management would like to congratulate the two heads of the new centres; Professor ?slaug Helland (cancer) and Professor Espen A. Haavardsholm (rheumatism). Read more on the Faculty of Clinical Medicine’s web pages in Norwegian.
We would also like to congratulate Head of Centre Ludvig A. Munthe now that the K.G. Jebsen Centre for B-cell cancer has been extended to 2024. The new centres that have been awarded funding from K.G. Jebsen will be announced on 15 January and have great opportunities to secure funding, as we have four of the five research groups participating in the final race. Being awarded a K.G. Jebsen centre is a huge accolade and we are extremely proud of these centres!
We received positive news in the new year with no less than four allocations in Fellesl?ftet IV – Major Interdisciplinary Research Projects with allocations for the Project Managers Philippe Collas (IMB), Ole Andreassen (Klinmed), Irep G?zen (NCMM) and Torbj?rn Omland (Klinmed). Another positive news item as we start 2022 is that we have also been awarded another ERC starting grant. We would like to congratulate researcher Johanne Jacobsen, who will receive NOK 15 million to conduct research into the immune system (link in Norwegian).
We look forward to many interesting research results and publications in 2022. Many of our researchers are also outstanding when it comes to the dissemination of knowledge. We would like to congratulate Professor Anne Spurkland, who was awarded both the University of Oslo’s and the Research Council of Norway’s Dissemination Awards in 2021.
Of course, this is not an exhaustive overview of all of the good news we have received. There will also be many excellent new opportunities in 2022. We hope that the researchers at the Faculty will continue the trend of writing excellent applications for research funding this year. For those of you who were nearly successful last time: Improve your applications in line with the excellent advice you received from the last evaluation and try again at the next opportunity!
The deadline to update your 2021 publications in CRIStin is 31 January and we would like to take this opportunity to once again remind employees with dual positions at the South-Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority and the University of Oslo of the importance of including BOTH institutional affiliations correctly in the publications. Read more about author addressing.
Innovation
Just before Christmas, five of the researchers at the Faculty were awarded funding from the University of Oslo to work on innovation projects. Read more about the prize in Norwegian.
The Greenhouse for Life Sciences is an interdisciplinary collaboration between the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences and the Faculty of Medicine, under the expert leadership of our Vice-Dean for Innovation and Internationalisation, Hilde Nebb. The Greenhouse will launch in February and will open its doors in the Research Park in March 2022. The Greenhouse will offer guidance and tools to help researchers and students to mature innovative ideas at an early stage. The Greenhouse will also develop venues for meetings between academia and trade and industry and will contribute to strengthening the interactions in the University of Oslo’s innovation ecosystem, both internally and externally. We look forward to the next steps!
2022 - election year
Towards late summer, we will hopefully have candidates in place for the autumn’s election of the new office of the Dean and a completely new Faculty Board from 2023. Stine Marie Ulven (IMB), K?re Inge Birkeland (ClinMed) and Knut Tore Stokke (Helsam) have been appointed as members of the Faculty’s Election Board and MSU has been asked to appoint a student representative as normal. The Election Committee, which will actively seek candidates for the new office of the Dean, will also be established in March.
Submit your nominations for the Anders Jahre Awards for Medical Research
Finally, I would also like to encourage you to submit your nominations for this year’s Anders Jahre Awards for Medical Research. It has been a long time since we last had MED winners, but there is no shortage of worthy candidates. I would like to add that few women are nominated each year, but there is no reason for this to be the case. The nomination deadline is 1 February.