Daily Archives: Friday April 17th, 2020

Teaching challenges

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Dear all K2 employees; THANK YOU for your invaluable efforts in teaching at our department!

Each of you contribute direct or indirect to the teaching provided. As with all other work, the corona epidemic also had a significant impact on how we could conduct educational activities. Under these circumstances, all staff have shown a great deal of flexibility: despite physically closed campus, our students have been nurtured and provided education, but using other modalities and through other channels.

Lectures have been moved from auditoriums to the web, been recorded through Kaltura or sound tracks on PowerPoint files and posted at MittUiB, group sessions or lectures are held via Zoom or Skype. And even though the hospital closed down a great deal of patient care, students who needed practice to obtain a temporary license have completed and been approved the revised minimum service. This provide Norway more people who can function as doctors from summer and onwards (leaving us better equipped for a possible new corona wave).

Thanks also to the hospitals in our region (Haukeland, Haraldsplass, Stavanger, Førde and Haugesund) that have helped students to actually complete their practice. We have been far more fortunate than in Oslo, where hospital closed the doors for students in clinical practice.

The faculty has established a group of super-users in digital teaching, Bergithe Eikeland Oftedal is K2’s representative. She shall not act as IT technician or conduct individual training but can advise on what programs/equipment and what is appropriate to use.

Finally: Thanks and goodbye from me! I have been acting as teaching director for K2 since I was hired as professor in the fall of 2015, ie. I started at the same time as the “new” curriculum for medicine. It has been exciting to follow the implementation (both of the curriculum and my professional academic function), participate in the inner life of the department management and to truly ensure that teaching is as high on the agenda as it deserves! I am not quitting teaching but I am transferring the formal responsibility as leader of teaching  to my successor Mette Vesterhus. Welcome Mette, you will receive proper presentation in a later K2-news.

Norwegian: Smittevernråd til virksomhetskritisk personell

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Bedriftshelsetjenesten har utarbeidet råd om smittevern for virksomhetskritisk personell som befinner seg på campus i en periode med økt fare for korona-smitte: Allmenne smittevernsråd til virksomhetskritisk personell ved UiB. Vi ber om at alle setter seg inn i, og følger disse. Ledelsen ved alle enheter skal legge til rette for gode rutiner for å begrense ytterligere smittespredning så mye som mulig.

Norwegian: Digitalt frokostmøte om arbeidsmiljø 14. mai

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Arbeidsmiljø – trakassering – håndtering

Et godt arbeidsmiljø kjennetegnes av god ledelse, medvirkning fra ansatte og tydelige organisatoriske rammer. Kompetanse, god kommunikasjon, mestring og anerkjennelse gir både trygghet og trivsel. Noen ganger er det imidlertid ikke slik og det oppstår situasjoner på arbeidsplassen om fører til mobbing og trakassering.

Vernetjenesten ved UiB ønsker å sette fokus på betydningen av godt arbeidsmiljø gjennom frokostseminarserien Arbeidsliv i endring – hva med arbeidsmiljøet. Serien setter søkelys på arbeidslivs- og arbeidsmiljøfaktorer under endring og omstilling. Hvordan tar vi vare på arbeidsmiljøet vårt og hverandre i en verden som stadig er i endring? Hvordan ha fokus på arbeidsmiljø med stadig nye krav til effektivitet, kompetansebygging, fleksibilitet, bærekraft og nye digitale løsninger i arbeidslivet? Målgruppen er alle ansatte og ledere.

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Peder Sather Grant Program

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The deadline for the Peder Sather program has been extended till 1 May. This is a nice opportunity for researchers who have collaborators at UC Berkeley or would like to establish collaborators with that US institution.

The Center offers grants of between $10K and $25K. Funds are made available for two academic years.  Grants can support activities such as workshops, mini-conferences, virtual intellectual exchanges, the undertaking of exploratory and pilot studies, activities such as PhD student exchanges, longer-term stays for Principal Investigators, the collection and analysis of data, and other core research activities.

You can find more info about the program here, and do not hesitate to contact K2’s research advisor if you want more info: amra.grudic@uib.no

This week’s employee – Karl Albert Brokstad

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With background as a Microbiologist, I started my doctoral work as a University fellow in 1990 together with Professor Lars R. Haaheim. I participated in building what has now become the Influenza centre. After defending my doctoral degree, I worked one year as temporary associate professor. I then received a three year post-doc. from the Rsearch Council of Norway, and worked with professor Karl-Henning Kalland on his HIV rev project. After this period, in 1998, I was offered a job at Broegelmann Research Laboratory with Professor Roland Jonsson as head, and I have been there since then. Firstly I was employed as researcher, then as senior researcher and in 2007 a permanent position as senior engineer. In my career at the UiB, I have published more than 100 peer review papers, I have also supervised over 30 students and been actively involved in all levels of teaching in microbiology and immunology. I have led several clinical studies. I am partner in several large projects funded by NFR and EU, and my main research interest is immunological processes in autoimmune rheumatic diseases, after infection and vaccination. I have a special interest in teaching, and particular in the next generation of scientists. I am responsible for several immunology courses and I am also the head of the research school «Bergen Research School for Inflammation».

Home office – Linn Iversen

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Clockwise:

-Can’t complain about the view. A little cloudy today, but have had all seasons since March 12.

– Easter pops up.

– Since my appointment with the hairdresser on March 16 got canceled, I had an emergency cut last week.

-A good, classical base for lifting a digital workday.

-A classic from the 80s has been brought down from the attic and given the opportunity to swing again.

After a little hick-ups with the digital hock-up in the first few days, all systems work fine. But the ergonomic working position can be a challenge. I take breaks doing stretching exercises on the living room floor.

Must admit that the coffee is better in the home office, but look forward to being back on campus. As a controller, everyday work consists of many smaller work tasks. It makes it easy to create lists to work with and plan the workday so that the shoulders, back and neck are not overloaded.

New publications

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Here are recent publications with contributions from K2 based on last week’s search on PubMed (and optionally articles that have not been included in previous lists). This time the list includes in total 14 recent publications. The entries appear in the order they were received from NCBI. If you have publications that are not included in this or previous lists, please send the references to Oda Barth Vedøy.

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