Author Archives: kre025

Draft for new UiB strategy

Per BakkeThe draft for the new UiB strategy valid for the years 2016-2022 has now been sent out for comments, and the issue will be handled by the university board during summer 2015. The institutes have been asked to provide input to the faculty, which will submit a joint input from MOF. The draft for the new strategy can be found  (in Norwegian) here You should set aside some time in order to review the document.

Some of you will say that this is not relevant for my day-to-day work, and my comment will not make a difference anyhow. This is wrong. The institutes, and the individual researcher, must increasingly provide his/her own funding, and we have to increasingly relate to society around us. Thus, the UiB strategy will, more than ever before, have an impact on our day-to-day situation. Your input will be given weight in K2’s input to MOF. MOF is one of five faculties at UiB.

I will therefore strongly encourage all of you to read through this draft and submit any input you may have to me already by Monday May 4 as the deadlines in this process are very tight.

 

Client operation on MAC

The IT-Department has offered client operations at MACs for a while. In the near future they will offer conversion to client operations with the IT-Department’s set up to those who have MACs at MOF. Read more about this set up here: https://it.uib.no/Mac (in Norwegian). Computers that are not part of the IT-Department’s client set up will be removed from UiB’s network, but they will still be able to obtain all resources via vpn: https://it.uib.no/en/VPN,_Virtual_private_network. User support will not be provided for these computers If there is any interest, the IT-Department will offer courses or information meeting before the converting begins.

If you wish to participate at such a course/meeting, please notify aud.utheim@uib.no.

 
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Invitation to Bioinformatics Conference

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INVITATION

This is a reminder of the one-day conference on
“Applied Bioinformatics in Diabetes and Obesity”.
Hosted by KG Jebsen Center for Diabetes Research.

We still have some seats available. If you wish to participate, please register as soon as possible (details below).

There is also an opportunity to listen to single talks without signing up for the conference package.

Time: Tuesday May 5th from 08.00-16.00
Place: Bikuben (new Helse Bergen conference facility next to Haukeland Hotel).

Information and detailed program can be found here.

The subsidized participation fee is kr. 500, and includes coffee breaks with refreshments and a light lunch. Pre-registration is mandatory for the conference package. Send an e-mail to: elin.horntvedt@uib.no

 

Please include name, position and affiliation.

 Welcome!

Søker forslag til særoppgaver fra de kliniske institutt!

Så langt i 2015 er det ikke meldt inn NOEN forslag til særoppgaver for medisinstudentene fra de to kliniske instituttene.

K2-ledelsen oppfordrer våre vitenskapelig ansatte på det sterkeste til å komme med oppgaveforslag i vedlagte mal og sender det snarest til: May.Skjerlie@mofa.uib.no

 Vi minner om at:
“Alle vitenskapelige ansatte ved fakultetet har plikt til å veilede minimum én student med særoppgave annet hvert år. Ansatte i bistillinger, engasjementstillinger og ansatte ved Haukeland Universitetssjukehus har rett, med ikke plikt til å veilede studenter. En særoppgave skal ideelt sett skrives mellom 3-5. studieår, over en ca 2-års periode.”

This week`s editorial

Eva GerdtsStudents enrolled in the medical degree programme who are stationed at Førde hospital, will receive interdisciplinary training as part of the practical teaching plan for 3rd internal medicine semester. The students are thrilled about having tasks with a great degree of responsibility involved and receiving feedback on their performance, as well as having the opportunity to work and learn interdisciplinary with nursing students. Skills obtained through interdisciplinary cooperation with other groups of health workers are already included in the learning outcomes that our students should achieve, but the training is not very well organized. Of course it is also unreasonable that similar learning programs are not offered students stationed at Haugesund or Stavanger hospitals. Professor Anders Bærheim at Department of Global Public Health and Primary Care has now taken the initiative of establishing Interdisciplinary Training as a mandatory part of the work placement in internal medicine and surgical disciplines. The project will be developed in collaboration with the UiB coordinators for teaching at Haugesund and Stavanger hospitals, as well as the University Colleges of Stord/Haugesund and Stavanger, both of which offer nursing degrees, all based on the Førde model. The project will also be an important contribution in order for K2 to achieve its strategic goal of strengthening the regional teaching Collaboration.

Supervisor seminar 25.03.2015

The faculty is inviting to a supervisor seminar on March 25.  The event will take place at Scandic Hotell Bergen City at 09:00 – 15:45.  The course will be led by Roland Jonsson and Per Bakke.  Binding registration is done my sending an e-mail to Mirza.mujic@mofa.uib.no by March 1. Click here for poster about the event (in Norwegian). Click here for program (in Norwegian).

 

Research Training at Department of Clinical Science

Roland JonssonOn an annual basis Department of Clinical Science has to report to the Faculty about what has been done to favour quality of the doctoral education and training for our 140-145 active PhD trainees. For 2013 we reported that the mandatory part of the UiB fellowships had to be checked up, on promotion of the research schools, to establish new research training courses and an increased focus on career planning and mobility of our candidates.     

Has this been followed up? Yes, to a major extent. The routines for handling the mandatory part (25%) of the UiB fellowships have been better organized. Regarding the research schools the new seminar series “Perspectives in translational medicine” has become a success with challenging and appealing lectures in the Bergen Postgraduate School of Clinical Medicine Research. And the Bergen Research School of Inflammation has established new courses (flowcytometry) and seen an increase in attendance at their immunology courses.

For the future it will also be a priority for both the PhD candidates and with the help from supervisors to plan the coming careers as well as increase the mobility e.g. visits with other groups/laboratories. Some of our candidates have got really interesting international visits, but this could have been much more implemented. It should also be emphasised that the research group leaders are encouraged to have meetings with the PhD candidates annually e.g. “medarbeidersamtaler” to pick up problems, misunderstandings etc. and not only the regular progress reports.

There has been no failure of PhD theses at Department of Clinical Science in 2014; a total of 23 candidates have finalized their theses with a public defence. Also the interaction between supervisors and PhD candidates has been smooth with only a few misunderstandings/problems, and these have been sorted out. So we are on the right track…….

 

Roland

Darwin Day 2015

As part of Darwin Day 2015 on 12.02.0215, Marta Mirazón Lahr, evolutionary anthropologist at University of Cambridge, will give the lecture “The Evolution of Human Diversity”.  The lecture takes place in Egget, Studentsenteret at 16:00 – 17:30.  For more information click here.

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Winners of Research Presentations 2014

We wish to congratulate all winners of Research Presentations 2014! Kristin Greve-Isdahl Mohn from K2 won the prize for best oral presentation, with runners up Arvid Steinar Haugen (K2) and Hilde Løland von Volkmann (K1). Tesfaye Leta from K1 won the prize for best poster presentations, with runners up Hege Clemm (K2) and Christel Gill Haanshuus (National Center for Tropical Infectious Diseases, HUS). Click here for more information about the winners and the event. Click here for a summary of the event written by jury member Rebecca Cox Brokstad.

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Principles for the 2015 K2-budget

bilde (1)2014 has been a demanding and tight budget year. However, we still managed to close the budget in balance, which was important in order to visualize the good financial management of K2. We have not increased our debts in 2014, but we still have to tackle our old debt of 3.2 million from 2013. Thus, we must outline how we intend to reduce the deficit in the coming years.

The 2015 budget must be in balance despite the extra “burden” of a very good result of the local salary negotiations for K2 employees. The negotiations ended with a 5 % salary increase which increased the annual salary costs at K2 with 2.6 million per year. We will obtain a 3 % salary- and price compensation, but an overall 1.6 % cut by UiB’s central administration brings the overall compensation down to 1,4%. Thus, in order to achieve a balanced budget we have to continue with technician payment of 50 000 per year per technician. We will receive a total of 4 million in operating funds for PhD and Postdocs. Of these, 2.8 million will be spent on the 25 public defenses planned for 2015, and approximately 500.000 will be used to cover the deficits. The remaining 650.000 will be earmarked PhD-Candidates and Postdocs. To compensate, the annual Small Operating Funds of 760.000 will be allocated to PhD-Candidates and Postdocs; candidates from “poor” research groups will have priority (announcement will come in February). As for external funding, it is great to register that there has been a 46 % increase in BOA-funding since the establishment of K2 in 2013.

K2 thus has many “rich” groups, but the department itself has very little room to maneuver. As a result it is almost given how we have to distribute our funding to come deliver a budget in balance.

The budget will be on the agenda at the Institute Council on February 5.
Click here for the budget.

Best regards

 

Eystein Husebye                                                        Synnøve Myhre

Head of Department                                                  Head of Administration

Ups, we did it again

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Last September we learned that Jan Haavik (Biomedicine) and Stefan Johansson landed their first Horizon 2020-project called MiND in the Marie Sklodowska-Curie program, under the pillar Excellent Science. Soon after, Gunnar Mellgren received an ERA-NET grant for a project aiming at studying cancer-preventive effects of diabetes drugs. Both ERA-NET and IMI are specific programs with a thematic focus, thus complementing H2020. With 2 granted projects out of 5 applications, K2 did very well.

Now the results from the first announcement of health-related research projects in Horizon 2020 are being published. Helga Salvesen obtained a grant for a cancer project tied to the pillar Societal Challenges called Female cancer prediction using cervical omics to individualise screening and prevention (FORECEE). Helse Bergen is partner, while UiB represented by K2 is associated partner, so-called 3rd party. Recently we also learned that Cecilie Svanes, affiliated with Center for International Health and Public Health but also a part of the thoracic medicine research group, successfully obtained a grant to study lung health across generations in European cohorts.

Last week I obtained a grant based on the application ULTRADIAN as coordinator, a project focusing on developing dynamic hormone diagnostics. Nine out of 466 applications obtained grants, which gives a success rate of 1.9%. As many as 138 of the 466 projects qualified for round 2. The EU-commission has received criticism for letting too many application through to the final round, so now the bar will be raised in future calls. Another reason for low success rates (1.9-6.9%) was that an unusual high number of applications were submitted.

All in all MOFA still has had a reasonably good start in H2020, but more grants would have been desirable. How does one succeed? Key success factors are to build or participate in strong networks with “EU-experience”, another is to involve industry (SME) as much as possible. K2 is prioritizing administrative resources to those who wish to write applications, and it is also possible to obtain positioning funds (PES) in order free time for application writing, networking, meetings and consultants.

 

Good luck with future applications

Best regards

Eystein Husebye