As of this writing, the university has just reopened after it was closed in emergency on March 12. Welcome back, but remember to keep your distance and practice the rules of infection carefully. The covid-19 disease is under control in Norway, but it can flare up again, and we do not want a new shutdown. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for all your constructive efforts during the shutdown. It had major consequences for our everyday activities, especially when it comes to experimental research and teaching. Thanks for the positive attitude and constructive measures. We have also learned a lot, and digital meetings will probably be frequently used in the future.

We have recently submitted a budget proposal for 2021. This year too, we suggest an ambitious budget that takes into account the challenges we see in the coming year in terms of education, research, innovation and dissemination. The economy group are thanked for their solid work on the budget.

We just had a kick-off meeting for the new UGLEs in connection with a new teaching structure at K2. I perceived the new UGLEs as interested and engaged with many relevant questions and comments. I think this will be great. Thanks to everyone for a constructive process.

After an unusually cold spring, we have finally got to taste the heat. We are now preparing for the summer holidays. Spring has for most people been a busy time with applications, OSKE and all the endings at the end of the semester. Hence, it will be good to have a few weeks off to do completely different things. It is important to charge the batteries so that we can start the autumn with new energy and work desire. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their great efforts this semester. Have a great summer vacation!

The new structure with teaching groups and teaching group leaders – UGLE – was adopted in January and is effectuated as of 1st August. Teaching is an important task for K2. We contribute heavily to teaching in the study programs for particular medicine, but also pharmacy, dentistry, nutrition and other educations. We hope that the new organization will highlight teaching as part of our mission in line with research, and contribute to a better overview of our teaching resources.

Despite a new name, the content is not radically new: this structure is largely a formalization of an informal, existing structure. We have partially “stolen” the UGLE name and structure from IGS, who has worked extensively with the development of its teaching and brought home several awards in pedagogy as a result. Maybe we can give them stronger competition?

The purpose of the organization is to establish a clear contact person for questions and clarifications related to teaching in the department’s disciplines (teaching groups). UGLE, head of a teaching group, has delegated responsibility to distribute teaching among the members of its teaching group and acts as contact person in the work of exam planning. In addition, UGLE is the central link between the teaching group and the semester boards, clinical departments and department management. It is right and important that there is a person who is close to and knows the academic environment that ensures that the teaching tasks are distributed in the best possible way, so that our students benefit accordingly.

The responsibility as a UGLE provides a good opportunity to influence the form and content of the teaching. Equally important is the good cooperation in the teaching groups between everyone who contributes to the teaching, so that together we can work fruitfully to renew, coordinate and improve the teaching.

I would like to extend a warm thanks to our recently departing head of education, Jone Trovik, who put a lot of effort into putting the UGLE structure in place. I am fortunate to be able to take over the baton as head of teaching as we slip into the “charm stage” – it will be exciting when we now words into action together! To get started, all UGLE are invited to a kick-off seminar on Tuesday 16 June.

Furthermore, I would like to mention that the faculty is now announcing the merit scheme for outstanding educators, see separate case in K2Nytt – will K2 have its first “Outstanding educator”?

This year, it is 70 years since the children got their own clinic at Haukeland University Hospital, and yesterday this was highlighted at the hospital. The Department of Pediatrics was a liberation gift from Sweden after the war. When the building was inaugurated by Crown Princess Märta on May 31, 1950, it was the first and largest children’s clinic in the country. Bergen has the second largest children’s clinic in Norway. The Department accepts annually around 4,000 patients aged 0 to 18. The original building was demolished two years ago, and by 2023 the Glass Blocks will be finished. Meanwhile, the Pediatrics and Adolescents is located in Marie Joys’ House.

Did you know that the Department of Pediatrics and Adolescents has always been closely linked to the University of Bergen, in fact before any of these two institutions were built? Before the University of Bergen was established, it was important with special departments to “sell” the idea of a university. Pioneers like Dr. med. Carl August Looft and Consultant Physician Nils Backer-Grøndahl were driving forces for plans for both a children’s clinic and a medical faculty in Bergen. The gift from Sweden with the establishment of a children’s clinic after the war became an important piece in the final phase of the fight for a university in Bergen that was finally adopted by Stortinget in 1946.

The first leader of the Department of Pediatrics was Professor Alfred Sundal, who was a professorship candidate upon accession and thus already an important professional person for developing the university clinic at Haukeland.

In the 1960s, Norway’s first chromosome laboratory was established at the Department of Pediatrics by Consultant Physician Ole K. Harlem. Professor Dagfinn Aarskog, who in 1970 took over the management of the Department of Pediatrics after Sundal, – much after a research stay at Johns Hopkins University in the United States – got a great interest in genetics and then headed the chromosome laboratory for many years. He saw early the enormous potential in molecular genetics and became a key driver for the establishment of the Department of Medical Genetics and initiator of the establishment of the Center for Clinical Molecular Medicine.

The research laboratory at the Department of Pediatrics was further developed by Aarskog, Professor Lage Aksnes and later the diabetes group to become a powerful research environment with experimental and clinical research with clear clinical utility – modern translational research. An experimental laboratory physically inside a clinical ward was unusual and very innovative.

In addition, under the leadership of professors Robert Bjerknes and Britt Skadberg, powerful research environments in heart and lung research were established as well as the follow-up of extremely premature children. These groups have been very important to the environment in the university part of stage 1 of the new Children and Youth Center in the Glass Blocks.

The Department of Pediatrics have not only incubated premature children – but also pediatricians – to pursue an academic career. In addition to those mentioned, former and current professors Per Erik Waaler, Oddmund Søvik, Gjermund Fluge, Trond Markestad, Gottfried Greve, Kristian Sommerfelt, Ansgar Berg, Thomas Halvorsen, Helge Ræder and the undersigned have been central to research, teaching, and not at least research management at the Department of Clinical Science, the Faculty of Medicine, and the University of Bergen centrally.

What will be the next 70 years of challenges and opportunities? Larger student numbers, more individual, and more digitized teaching are likely to be central and are already underway. In research, large and real-world data sets, bioinformatics, and precision medicine are likely to be very important. User participation is expected to be part of the research, and the demand for relevance and benefit is probably increasing, while basic research will have an increased focus. And women! Of the 18 mentioned above, only one is female. Here, we have a job to do the next years!

As most people know, I am a pediatrician and have had the privilege of receiving my education at the Department of Pediatrics and Adolescents, and later experienced a stimulating environment for a university career up to the position of Professor and Head of the Center for Diabetes Research. I would like to thank you personally for this.

Finally, I would like to express my sincere thanks to the Department of Pediatrics and Adolescents´ leadership and the around 300 staff for being so positive about integrating the university’s core areas of research and teaching, innovation and communication with clinical practice. Access to clinical records and samples, and clinical questions, are crucial for our research. Education of health professionals is our main task. I am proud and delighted with the Department of Pediatrics and Adolescents, and believe that together we can make a difference – for our children – when it comes to translational and clinical research, and the education of top health and university staff.

Without the children´s clinic, no university – and without the university, no children’s university clinic.

Happy Birthday!

Department of Clinical Science shut down March 12. Staff and students lost access to their workplace and campus, leaving them to find new solutions to keep the wheels running. The K2 leader group recently made a survey to map how the corona crises has been handled. Here follows an excerpt of the answers and comments.

Thanks to good IT solutions, many have been able to work effectively at home. Researchers have spent time working on applications and writing papers. Meetings have been held using Zoom, Teams or similar platforms. Still, there are many critical voices that the shutdown has been too extensive and rigid, without local adaptions. Helse Bergen staff have been able to work more or less as before applying infection control measures, while UiB employees have not had access to the laboratories. Shutdown of the core facilities is another point that has been criticized. They could have been operated more or less uninhibited with necessary infection control measures. In particular, the shutdown and slaughter of valuable laboratory animals at the animal facility has been met with harsh criticism. PhD students and postdoctoral fellows have been particularly affected, and many ask for extension of their grant period. After seeing that Norway and especially Vestland has controlled the pandemic effectively, the UiB leadership is criticized for the slowness in reopening activities.

Many public defences of doctoral thesis have been held digitally, but the experiences have been divided. In particular, it was pointed out that IT support has been deficient. When it was allowed for 50 people to meet, UiB did not follow up, but adhere to the rule of a maximum of 5 people, why?

The technical staff is the group that has had the least benefit from home office, and has not had enough tasks to fill their time. The administrative staff, on the other hand, have mostly been able to work as usual. Digital solutions and meetings have mostly worked well, but the social community and the collegiate community has been sorely missed.

In summary, experience shows that local adaptations and considerations must be used in the prevention measures. In addition to a quick shut down, one must also be quick to open up when the situation allows. In the event of a new infection peak, we hope for a slightly more forward-leaning and dynamic UiB management that can better coordinate initiatives with Helse-Bergen, which we share work places with.

Thanks to all who responded to the survey.

Eystein and Julie

Early analyses discussed in a recent article in Nature (10.1038/d41586-020-01294-9) suggest that female academics are posting fewer preprints and starting fewer research projects than their male peers.

COVID-19 is changing the way research is done. World-wide lockdowns mean that, overnight, many households worldwide have become an intersection of work, school, and home life. The new mechanisms of accelerated peer review, the increased quantity and speed of available data, and the distribution of funding across sectors are changing the equilibria of the academic world. We therefore need to pay attention to the effects this has on disparities. What happens when a couple is at home? Is it exacerbating gender inequality? In a commentary in Nature (doi: 10.1038/d41586-020-01135-9) very early during the pandemic, Alessandra Minello suggested it is disproportionately affecting the productivity of female academics, because they often do more caregiving than men.

Megan Frederickson, an ecologist at the University of Toronto being COVID-19-quarantined herself, looked at preprint servers to investigate whether women were posting fewer studies than they were before lockdowns began (https://github.com/drfreder/pandemic-pub-bias/blob/master/README.md). Peer review takes time, it is still too soon to see COVID-19’s effects on the numbers of journal articles published by female versus male academics. However, a growing number of academics make their submitted or in-progress manuscripts available on preprint servers, meaning it might be possible to measure the pandemic’s effect on preprint submissions in real time. She looked at arXiv (physical sciences), and bioRxiv (life sciences) to determine the gender of studies posted between March 15 and April 15 in 2019 and in 2020. The number of women who authored preprints at arXiv increased by 2.7% from 2019 to 2020 — but the number of male authors grew by 6.4% over the same period. The numbers for bioRxiv were 24.2% vs. 26%. A similar trend was found in a separate study including nine popular preprint servers (https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/decline-women-scientist-research-publishing-production-coronavirus-pandemic). Thus, women’s publishing rate has fallen relative to men’s amid the pandemic.

In another study by the information scientist Cassidy Sugimoto at Indiana University Bloomington on three registered-report repositories including ClinicalTrial.gov, there was a decrease in the proportion of submissions by female principal investigators from March and April of 2019 to the same months in 2020, when lockdowns started. Hence, women are registering a smaller proportion of new research projects than before the pandemic.

What are the likely causes for this effect? Increased household labor and childcare responsibility are probably the major reasons. Also, women more often take care of ailing relatives. The sudden shift to online teaching might mean more work for women as they in average probably have more teaching commitments than men, while the shutdown of the universities might free more time for men to write papers as they more often have non-research commitments.

What can be done to mitigate this effect? Our scientific environment requires the participation of all members of the population; a crisis requires that we draw from the intellect of the full population. As the effects and the pandemic are likely to linger, we must consider how our evaluation systems and resource allocation mechanisms take into account the inequities in labor distribution for women. We need to create infrastructures to allow for all populations to participate, and to acknowledge systematic differences in their ability to do so.

Enjoy your week-end!

Up till now, the government has had a strategy to knock down the corona virus. The spread of the infection is now under control, and yesterday the government announced that they are now switching to a control strategy. The goal is still the same as before, that our health service should have the capacity to help everyone who needs it, those with coronary illness and those with other illnesses. This means that businesses and activities must still take infection control measures when they open up.

In recent weeks, K2 has opened something up – from only allowing exceptions for critical functions to exceptions essential for those completing a degree in 2020 or to generate preliminary data for research applications or particularly costly or critical experiments. At the time of writing, we do not know how much of our activity K2 can open in the next few weeks. The government proposes that distance education should continue to be the norm after May 11, and those in need of collective travel to work should still have a home office. Presently, we do not know whether there will be new reliefs for the laboratories. When we have received new guidance from the Faculty, we will announce the new guidelines through the research group leaders.

Of course, there is great eagerness to get back to normal life at K2. I’m very happy about that. But it is important to remember that the ongoing opening up can give the impression that the outbreak of the virus is about to go over. Unfortunately, it is not. As we gradually reduce the restrictions, it requires that we still keep control of the infection. At K2, we must continue with the simple measures that we know is working and have few negative consequences: be careful about hand washing and cough hygiene, keep at least one meter distance, and stay home when you are sick.

Enjoy the (hopefully corona-free) weekend!

Now it has been nearly 7 weeks since UiB was closed due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Most of us are still obliged to use home-office. Since Monday 27/4, some more people have been allowed back in the labs. However, it is still an exception that you get access!

Remember that it is the research group leader who has to send a list of who should have access to me (including risk assessment and confirmation of passed infection control course), and then Pål as head of department decides who gets access. And then of course, there are the infection control and hygiene rules when you are at work, so it takes some organization to avoid too many people at the same time in smaller rooms. A big thank you to all those who help make it work in these times!

I would also like to remind PhD fellows who have been delayed in their progress because of home-office during the Corona period to make a written description of the delay and let the supervisor confirm this. The documentation has to be sent to the faculty administration by e-mail:  hrmed@uib.no, mark with Korona in the subject line. This documentation will be entered into the personnel folder of the individual and may form the basis for an extension of the appointment period if necessary.

Finally, I wish you all a nice International Worker’s day and a good weekend!

Jone Trovik has been the leader of teaching at K2 since 2015. She took on this important responsibility in connection with the implementation of the new curriculum. Jone has done this in a very satisfactory way. Surely there was no downside to her being an active gynecologist! In addition, she has contributed constructive input to the many issues we are working on at K2. In particular, I want to highlight her good mood and contagious laughter. It’s never boring when Jone is there. Thank you so much, Jone!

Everything has to come to an end, and after 4 ½ as leader of teaching, it was natural with a change. The new leader of teaching is Mette Vesterhus. She is a 50/50 associate professor / consultant physician (gastroenterology) at Haraldsplass Diakonale Sykehus. She has had a research stay at Harvard and has her research interests in diseases of the liver and biliary tract. Vesterhus has been interested in teaching since the days of her studies. She has been a student representative both to the Student Parliament at UiB and to the National Student Organization. Since 2018, she has been the subject manager for the propedeutics teaching for medical students at Haraldsplass.

Welcome Mette as leader of teaching at K2!

Now that the Easter holidays are here again, we can look forward to even brighter days, warmer sun, and some long-awaited holidays. I hope you can enjoy some well-deserved days off with family, friends, outdoor activities, and rest.

The coronavirus epidemic has halted most of the experimental research and turned upside down teaching and meeting activities. It has been a tough and brutal exercise, but I think we have also learned a lot that we will take with us after the epidemic is over. I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your constructive attitude and effort in meeting the enormous challenges we have had since March 12 at 6 pm. I am really proud of the K2.

On April 8, the government will announce possible changes in restrictions on schools and universities. The university now operates with 6 phases where phase 0 is where we are now and phase 5 is regular activity. If there will be any ease of restrictions for the universities, UiB wants this to happen gradually and slowly. We have mapped research and teaching activities that may fit with what the university calls phases 1 and 2, which seem most realistic in the first place. The research groups have been given the challenge of suggesting a limited number of projects. I have reviewed these, and based on central guidelines, selected those that seem most critical to get started and gain acceptance for. An application has been sent to the faculty for exemptions from the current limitations for these projects. Unfortunately, the deadline for this review was extremely short, and I thank the research team leaders and researchers for responding so quickly and constructively.

For many Norwegians, Easter means spending the holidays skiing in the mountains, boating, or travelling abroad. This will be different this year with a ban on travel and spending the night in the cabin in municipalities other than one´s place of residence and advice on reduced activity at sea. Prime Minister Erna Solberg says it is not a terribly great sacrifice to stay home, and although Norwegians are concerned about their own freedom and independence, this is the time to show unity. I really agree with her. Take the short trips instead of the long ones right now. Emergency preparedness in the mountain areas should be used for those who live there. Keep your distance – by exposing ourselves to infection, we can infect others who cannot tolerate it – here we must all take responsibility for our community at large. Also keep in mind those who are alone for various reasons. The holiday itself can be a difficult time for them, and the coronavirus epidemic can add a new kind of loneliness to being alone. Make a phone call, meet on the streets only at a distance, arrange Skype / Zoom / Facetime meetings with chat, contests and more. Only the imagination sets the limits, we have all seen the video clips that go viral at the moment.

Wishing a happy Easter holiday to all of you. Take care of yourself, your loved ones, and also those who are not the closest!

Pål

The Covid-19 pandemic has upturned our daily lives and much of the research, both clinically and experimentally, has stopped. On the other hand, the work situation provides the opportunity to work well with applications.

The application forms from the Research Council are now available and at the same time the deadline for the Research Council has been moved to May 20, giving extra time for application writing. Already, those who intend to apply must contact the economist they have been assigned to plan the budget work. Amra will help with application writing and will give priority to those who have announced that they will apply.

This year, the Researcher Project for Scientific Renewal is open to all research areas; further Research Project for Young Talents (age less than 40 years), 2-7 years after dissertation and Three-year Researcher Project with International Mobility.

Good luck

Eystein

Dear employees of K2

We are in an unreal time with an uncertain future. We do not know how severe the coronavirus epidemic will strike in Norway, we do not know how long the epidemic will last. Many people work around the clock to minimize the impact of the epidemic. We have reason to be proud of the enormous efforts the authorities, health workers and many others make. What we can all do, is loyally to follow up on all the advices and orders given by the authorities.

The need for information is of course huge. There are general guidelines that the information channels be relatively few in order to avoid opposing advice and orders. Therefore, the management at K2 has been careful to send out too many mails or newsletters. The disadvantage can be that local conditions might not be addressed in the general information. Please, let us know if there are things you are wondering about, and that we should be informed about.

The University wants most of our information to be collected at uib.no/korona. In addition, we relate to Helse Bergen and FHI’s information pages.

Lending personnel
One subject that will become increasingly relevant is that you may be asked to serve in health care organizations or municipalities. Agreements have now been made with health authorities throughout the Helse Vest and the Bergen Municipality. Please, refer to the Norwegian version of this newsletter for further details.

Take care of each other
The Prime Minister calls for unity and care for each other. It is extremely important to work together now towards a common goal. Furthermore, there are many who can be anxious, feel lonely, and need practical help with childcare, grocery shopping, etc. Here, we can all make an effort!

I am impressed by the positive, constructive, and innovative attitude I have experienced from the staff last week. Professional meetings are already held with presentations for up to 33 participants (!) via Skype or Zoom, teaching is done via Skype or Zoom, and practical training is replaced by You Tube videos, TBL material online, and alternative material from eg. Harvard Medical School. I’m very proud of what you have achieved so far! We learn something new every day, much of what I think will be used even after the coronavirus epidemic is over.

There seem to be a few days without rain coming up. Enjoy the good weather – not at the cabin of course, but perhaps on a hike over Vidden or Fløyen where it should not be a problem to keep 2 meters distance to other people.

Make the best of your weekend!