Monthly Archives: December 2020

Merry Christmas and happy holiday season!

“Just another year”? Because of Covid-19, 2020 will be a year for the history books. The pandemic has turned research and teaching upside down for most of us. Hygienic measures such as social distancing, face masks and antimicrobial sanitizing, as well as the reorganization of communication and teaching to digital media, have required a lot from the individual and the organizations, including K2. But it has been great for me as a leader to see how well you have coped with this upheaval with acceptance, constructive action and even enthusiasm. Thank you very, very much!

We have learned a lot in many areas. Within a few weeks, UiB became digitalized, including eg. The K2 Day! New forms of communication make distances trivial and new international contacts and networks have become possible. I think we will emerge stronger from the pandemic, although there are some things that have been delayed or made more difficult.

K2 has undergone a number of changes in 2020 in that the research groups have been partially reorganized and teaching groups have been established with teaching group leaders (UGLEs). I think this will improve the academic environment for research and teaching. Thanks for constructive processes and involvement.

Despite Covid-19, 2020 has been a good year for K2. Employees have published in the best journals and been awarded prizes. Professor Nina Langeland will lead a National Program Against Antibiotic Resistance, Professor Eva Gerdts a Center for Heart Disease in Women, and Professor Einar Klæboe Kristoffersen a Center for Regenerative Medicine. Congratulations to these environments!

We have so far not fully achieved our goal of external research funding for 2020, but we hope this year’s allocations in the Research Council of Norway, which will be announced next week, will rectify this. K2 coordinates two COE applications, is shared leader of two more and partner on another five. It is to hope that at least one of these will make it! Thanks to Silke and Emmet for being temporarily willing to move up!

Autumn is often perceived as hectic due to application deadlines, meetings, and new student courses. And the semester is relatively short compared to the spring semester. Hence, as the year is nearing its end, it is good to be able to look forward to a holiday with the opportunity for peace and reflection.

For many, Christmas and the holiday season is the highlight of the year where family and friends gather for a holiday full of traditions and a sense of belonging, followed by Christmas in space, which can provide opportunities for other activities at home in Bergen, trips to the mountains or elsewhere. Covid-19 unfortunately places restrictions on this this year, but then we get the opportunity to form even closer ties within our own family.

What most of us take for granted is not necessarily the case for everyone. Some have lost someone they loved or have no close friends or family gathered this year. Can we think extra about these and maybe include them in our own Christmas celebration?

With wishes for a peaceful Christmas and all the best for 2021.

Please check the HR-portal

Just a quick reminder that the last day for approving any travel expenses or any other refund payments in the HR-portal is 16 December. We ask you to send these and any other questions you may have as soon as possible, so that we can go through them before the deadline.

We ask everyone to please check to see if they have any unfinished tasks in the HR-portal, particularly any travel or refund expense forms that may have been returned and await handling.

When the automatic checking system (Bot-Anna) discovers any errors in a form, the form is returned to the sender – but no email is sent to warn the sender that the form has been returned.

It is therefore possible that people may have not seen that a form has been returned – so please check! These incompleted forms will not be automatically transferred to the new system at the end of the year.

Invitation to apply for UoO education – and research leader programme

See the following links for more information (unfortunately, the first two attachments are in Norwegian only):

Invitasjon til UiOs lederprogrammer 2021

Vedlegg 1 Invitasjon til RLP-Start 2021

Vedlegg 2 Invitasjon til ULP7

Potential applicants are asked to send their application to head of administration Julie no later than 10th January.

Norwegian: To enkle testmetoder for Cryptosporidium diaré evaluert

Tarmparasitten Cryptosporidium er en viktig årsak til diarerelaterte dødsfall blant små barn. PhD-kandidat Øystein Johansen har sammen med veiledere Kurt Hanevik og Nina Langeland gjennomført en studie, CRYPTO-POC, og vist at både auramin LED-mikroskopi og en hurtigtest kan gi rask, pålitelig og pasientnær diagnostisering av parasitten i fattige land. Les mer om studien i pressemelding her.

Studien er nylig publisert i det prestisjetunge tidsskriftet Lancet Infectious Diseases: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1473309920305569

New publications

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 7 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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Do University of Bergen and the health trusts cooperate well enough?

As an employee at the University of Bergen and Haukeland University Hospital for almost 25 years, I have been able to participate in and witness a fantastic research and competence building in our institutions. The many colleagues who are employed in so-called dual positions (both UiB and HUH) are in many ways the hubs of this collaboration and those who drive clinical research forward. Although the cooperation is good, there is also “debris in the machinery”.

Different salary models in recruitment positions between those who are employed at UiB and the health trust are a source of a potential conflicts as people who have the same type of job and function can end up with very different salaries. The previously sought-after part-time positions at UiB are no longer so attractive. Colleagues experience that they get a lot more work and stress without the department facilitating research and teaching. If a part-time UiB-position lead to reduced workplan at the hospital, the recent salary increase to these postion is being “eaten up”. There are many who now ask themselves the question – do I want this?

I call for a better climate of cooperation. We should not be competitors – our opponents are the research and teaching environments in Oslo, Trondheim and Tromsø. We in Western Norway need to cooperate more and become more competitive on the national and international arena. Perhaps a working group can take a closer look at how cooperation can be improved in concrete terms.

Eystein

Vice head of K2

Information about new system and closure of Pagaweb

Please note in particular that during the transition to the new system on 1st January 2021, SAP, you will lose access to Pagaweb. Salary slips from 2020 or earlier will unfortunately not be available in the new self-service portal from DFØ. You can also not log in to Pagaweb after the New Year.

If necessary, you must therefore download your old payslips before the New Year, as well as any other historical information you think you might need.

Relevant information about the new system can be found here (regretfully Norwegian only):

https://www.uib.no/foransatte/129977/prosjekt-økonomi-og-lønn#oppl-ring

Frameworks to enhance research quality at UiB

The project «Frameworks to enhance research quality», UiB FRAM, will examine the frameworks for research quality and artistic development work in the academic environments at the University of Bergen.

A survey will be sent out to all academic staff members at the University of Bergen. The aim is to examine how, as an institution, we can make provisions so that academic communities at UiB have framework conditions that ensure high quality research, and to look at how we can work to ensure strong framework conditions in the future.

By participating in the survey, you have an opportunity to share your experiences of what works well and where improvement is needed.

Scholarships within the framework of UN Young Researcher’s Grant.

20 scholarships of 1000€ each are offered to the students within the framework of UN Young Researcher’s Grant.

Application requirements:

– applicant is not eligible for other scholarship programs like ERASMUS (e.g. length of stay under 2 months)

– possible mobility period is between the 1st April, 2021 and 31st March, 2022,

– length of stay abroad – 1 – 6 months.

– application deadline –  5th February (as always the universities can set a different internal application deadline, so that the nominated students could be sent to the Task Force before 12th February)

All UN universities are asked to promote the mobility scheme among their students and young researchers. For details and the application form please refer to the UN website https://www.utrecht-network.org/activities/young-researchers-grant/

New publications

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 9 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.

Continue reading