Somewhat unfamiliar? This novel was released in 1986, with a Norwegian translation in 1987. The author Kazuo Ishiguro was awarded the Nobel prize of literature for 2017. The plot is set in the author’s country of birth Japan, and this is the connection with this editorial: the University of Bergen’s strategic partnership with Japanese research organizations. Together with NTNU and Innovation Norway, UiB have joined forces to approach potential Japanese collaborators in relation to research and innovation. During spring 2017 former Dean Langeland headed a delegation visiting Tokyo and Kyoto, where themes discussed spanned from stem cell research to geriatric medicine.
Japan is well known for technology (and labor effort). Do you have ideas/thoughts related to your research that may profit by Japanese industrial cooperation? Our Vice Dean of Innovation, Helge Raeder, is eager to convey ideas/contact/collaboration. A new Japanese visit is planned for spring 2018. Perhaps you should be joining?
Speaking of innovation and future research: Horizon 2020 hosts a kick-off seminar the 31st of October. Please sign up! Both the Head of Bergen University as well as “our” Dean Bakke is eager to encourage researchers to apply for international research funds. The institute has research advisors for helping you during such application processes; make use of them!
Another action point from the University leadership is increased digitalization: how may this be used to save resources? Are there tasks in your everyday work life better handled by a computer than by manual labor? I am unsure if the hospital’s speech recognition program is a very good example, but the principle is illustrative: instead of secretaries writing the doctors’ notes, the dictates are transcribed by a computer. And thanks to machine learning (!), the writings turn out as (a little) more understandable for every note I make. But in the beginning, there were a lot of absolutely incomprehensible phrases written in the patient files; almost as if one should be “An artist of the floating world”.
Jone