How to create excellent research was the main theme of this year’s autumn meeting for the K.G. Jebsen centers. Some of the country’s most successful researchers shared their experiences. It was pointed out that success (not unexpectedly) is the result of hard work, but all emphasized two important elements to become a leader in research: research stay abroad and networking.

A stay abroad gives the opportunity to learn new techniques and work with ambitious colleagues who are more skilled than you. At the same time, a stay abroad is an excellent opportunity to create your own network. The practical difficulties of going abroad, perhaps with a partner and children, was highlighted. However, a shorter stay is better than no stay. UiB pursues a conscious policy in this area, for example, by postdoctoral fellows receiving an additional year if they go abroad, sabbaticals, and channels to apply for additional funding.

Success is infectious. If one of the PhD students in the lab manages to publish a paper in Nature or a corresponding journal, chances are bigger that you will be able to do the same. If your labfriend gets an ERC-Starting Grant, chances are that you can be equally successful. Harald Stenmark at the Institute of Cancer Research at UiO is one of three Norwegians to receive two ERC-Advanced Grants. He talked about the positive cycle of research. Project funds provide the opportunity to invest in equipment, personnel and money to do studies. This gives (hopefully) good results and publications, which can be used to apply for more funding for more equipment, people and studies. Ole Andreassen, who heads Norment, one of the Centers of Excellence (along with, among others, Vidar Steen and Stephanie Le Hellard at K2) highlighted the enormous importance of international networks to map the genetic mechanisms of psychiatric diseases.

The start is often the most difficult part and the institution should play an major role facilitator. K2 is doing quite well in this regard and we have many excellent examples to follow. I am confident that we can create more excellent research in the future. The next chance to excell is to obtain a new Center of Excellence. The Medical Faculty wants drafts of new centres by 1 December. More information will follow in K2-news.

Eystein Husebye
Acting Head of Department

Our department contributes a lot within education; Mostly for medicine but also significant contributions of teaching in studies of pharmacy, nutrition, dentistry and also non-medical subjects at the other faculties.

It is difficult to have a proper overview regarding who is responsible for what related to teaching within our departmental structure based mainly on research groups, not the traditional medical specialities/subjects.

The head of our department has therefore set up a working group in which we will try to find a sensible structure to secure a good overview of who is responsible for what regarding our educational responsibilities. Who holds the overview of which teaching resources are available? When a teacher becomes ill; where are persons with the right skills to step in? And when applying for a leave of absence: who should be consulted to know whether the educational responsibilities might be undertaken by other?

IGS (Department of Global Public Health and Primary Care) has an administrative structure of their education recourses in parallel with their research-group structure, where they have teaching/educational group leaders named UGLE (English: OWL) that should hold this overview regarding teaching resources (teachers!) and their responsibility to undertake defined teaching tasks. We are now working to develop our teaching structure and perhaps define corresponding OWL territories within K2. Each OWL-nest will probably be connected to a research groups, but some of the OWL-nestlings will have to fly a little outside their local territories to perform their teaching associated with other subject areas.

Each OWL must keep an overview of their respective OWL-chicks while the HEAD of OWLS  (Teaching Director of K2 = signed) supervises the OWLS’ management of their territories.

We need to map K2s total educational contributions to know what is affiliated with each of our research group today (the “terrain”) and how our education map should be made to fit properly in the future!

If you have opinions regarding this process, we are very interested in input; which teaching resources belong together in one “nest”? How to ensure good coverage of all education within our responsibility? Please give feedback to the K2 teaching director!

The department management is really trying to secure teaching resources when announcing vacancies! But we need to know what the former position has contained regarding teaching, and who may this teaching be transferred to if other teaching is to be secured by affiliating this position to another subject/field.