Now it has already been 6 months since I took over as head of department at K2. Time has flown by and Christmas is already next week! I’m almost done with my performance appraisals (all associate professors and professors with 50%-100% position), only a few remain. It has been very useful to get to know the people who make up our academic backbone better, and I have received a lot of good input. Here again a reminder to the research group leaders to ensure that all our employees have the opportunity for an employee interview, and at the same time those who have not yet been offered can request it as well.

As we know, the economy is very tough, and we must continue to reduce our expenses and at the same time increase revenues in 2025. This is what we are working on! Again, an invitation to actively use our core facilities (https://www.uib.no/klin2/63499/kjernefasiliteter), use buy-out of your own time or a technician in applications and consider opportunities to offer continuing and further education (EVU; https://www.uib.no/utdanning/evu).

Despite all the challenges, 2024 has been a successful year for K2 with many awards from external financiers as well as many awards to researchers and teachers associated with K2 (including “Søren Falch and Øienlæge Sigurd Falch’s Foundation’s Junior Prize for Young Researchers” to Marc Vaudel and “Søren Falch and Øienlæge Sigurd Falch’s Award for Outstanding Leadership in Medical Research” to Eva Gerdts, to name a few). Thank you so much for your efforts, everyone!

I wish you all a peaceful and Merry Christmas!

Silke

The research conducted by PhD candidates constitutes an important part of UiB’s overall research efforts. In 2023, PhD candidates were the sole or co-authors on 30 percent of UiB’s publications. Of the 215 completed PhDs at UiB in 2023, the Faculty of Medicine accounted for 80. Of these, 25 were completed at K2, 28 at IGS, and 17 at K1, while IBM and IKO each had 5. For 2024, a total of 26 PhD candidates will receive their doctorates at K2. This is a great.

In recent years, there has been a decline in the number of joint announcements of PhD positions at the faculty, with only two such positions advertised in the fall of 2024, with nearly 50 applicants. Unfortunately, there will be no room for announcing PhD positions at all in the spring of 2025. The reason for this is increasingly constrained budgets, the use of PhD positions as a co-payment in larger applications and rewards for grants, as well as delays in PhD completion, making the budgets more uncertain for the faculty.

In terms of completion, K2 is fairly stable. About 70% of all started PhDs have defended their dissertations within 6 years. Staff appraisals should be actively used to uncover and remedy delaying factors where possible.

Furthermore, all postdocs who wish to continue an academic career are encouraged to apply for the Momentum program, for which MedFak has 4 spots, with an application deadline of March 21.

The Christmas tree shows the research areas of permanent scientific staff at K2. If you believe your area is not included, please send up to 10 keywords to our research advisor Susanna Pakkasmaa. This will help her send targeted information about relevant announcements.
Merry Christmas!

Kurt

Dear everyone,

We are approaching Christmas, and many groups have slowly started with Christmas celebrations. Remember that the whole of K2 is invited to a joint little Christmas gathering with mulled wine and gingerbread cookies on December 13th at 11:30, 5th floor lab building.

True to tradition, we have invited our professors emeritus/emerita to a Christmas lunch. It was very nice to have many of the older generation visit us, and our research leader Kurt Hanevik gave an exciting presentation about his research (even though diarrhea maybe wasn’t the most appropriate topic to hear about during lunch).

On the same day, we celebrated together with the faculty that Marc Vaudel received an ERC Consolidator Grant. This is really big, congratulations again!

And then we learned that Oleksii Nikolaienko from the Mohn Cancer Research Laboratory has received FRIPRO funding from the Research Council of Norway! Congratulations! We can happily continue in this way 😊 

Otherwise, many of us were involved in the implementation of OSKE12 on Thursday 5 December – thank you very much to everyone who participated! Without all of you, it would not have been possible to carry out such a resource-intensive exam that is highly appreciated by the students! A special thanks to Ingvil that had her last working day at K2 today. She is starting new adventures in Sjøforsvaret.

Finally, I would just like to mention that the Faculty has announced education awards and requests that nominations for the education awards come from an environment, not from individuals. The department is happy to collect proposals here. The internal deadline is set for 1 February 2025.

The Faculty has also announced research prizes for the best publication, best doctoral degree, researcher/research group, dissemination and innovation. Here it is the departments that can nominate 1 candidate in each category (except PhD work, then we can nominate 2 candidates). Proposals can be submitted here. Our internal deadline is set for February 1, 2025.

Have a great weekend!

Silke