Centre for Pharmacy 10 years
Centre for Pharmacy celebrates its 10th anniversary at UiB. The center is interdisciplinary between MatNat and MOF while administratively located at K2 with Svein Haavik as director of the center. Today 24 students are annually accepted at the master program in pharmacy. It has become a popular program and has the highest admission requirements among the pharmaceutical schools in Norway.
It is a healthy 10 year old we are talking about. At the same time there is no reason to hide the challenges the center is facing. The study in Pharmacy is not fully funded by the government. It is a clear goal to achieve this. There is a great need for pharmacists in Norway and another goal is to increase the educational capacity to 35 students per year. The teaching of pharmaceutics is currently being held at the University of East Anglia. From 2015 it will be moved to Bergen and the teaching capacity within this subject must be developed at MatNat and MOF. There is a need for more pharmacists with research expertise and work is being done to establish a research school in pharmacy. Centre for Pharmacy also provides opportunities. Master Students in Pharmacy represents a great resource that many of K2 ‘s research groups should take advantage of .

More about the Center for Pharmacy here (in Norwegian).

There is reason to congratulate the Centre for Pharmacy with the first 10 years and wish good luck with the next!

Per

Offices at K2

There is a great need for office space at K2, and we have a limited area available. At the same time disagreement over space may cause high temperatures. It is therefore important to have proper rules for access to office space. K2 is responsible to provide office to the permanent staff and to the preliminary scientific staff on projects administered at K2. II-positions having their main engagement at the hospital, is the responsibility of Helse-Bergen.

Among the scientific staff the following order of priority to office space: professor, associate professor, researcher, post-doc, PhD candidate and finally master grade and medical students during their year of research. We will also try to help the emerities as far as possible.

Irene Hjelmås has now mapped all office space at K2, who is sitting where, and that people are allowed to do so according to the above rules. Any need for office should be sent to Irene. Space will then be provided by the administration. It is not allowed to just sit down at a vacant office.

K2 has access to offices at Haraldsplass. It is easy to understand that people would prefer to sit in the Labbygget or at the Haukeland campus. But in some cases there might be necessary to place people at Haraldplass. This might for instance be PhD candidates about to finish their thesis.

A transparent system for providing offices where everybody sticks to the rules will be beneficial to all of us.

Per

Last week, The Postgraduate School of Clinical Medical Research successfully held its annual event: Research Presentations 2013: A total of 45 posters and 15 oral presentations were being held from PhDs and postdocs from K1, K2 and the hospital departments (evt link til innsiden-sak??). The event illustrates the wide variety of research projects that are being performed at the two institutes with very high quality poster- and oral presentations. The event ended with a price ceremony, speeches and entertainment.  We congratulate all the award winners, lead by first price winners Alessandro De Bortoli (K2) for the poster contest and Lene Bjerke Laborie (K1) for her oral talk. I would also like to thank the committee members phd students Marie Omsland, Monica Dalva and Ina Nepstad and the jury for making this an event to remember!

 The Research school begins the year with a new board. We thank the previous leader Eyvind Rødahl and the board for their work. We wish to continue upon their work and aim at making the Research school a meeting point for phd-students where they can meet with their peers across different research fields to discuss science and life.

 This semester, a new research seminar series will be started at the K1 and K2 – Perspectives in translational medicine: The lectures will be held by leading scientists and clinicians at K1 and K2, the first Wednesday each month at 14.15-15.00. We hope that the series will be characterized by high quality research and presentations, ”hot topics” and a special emphasize on translational studies. We welcome all researchers, postdocs and phd-students and hope that this will be a forum for scientific exchange and discussions.

 The first lecture will be held by Bjørn-Tore Gjertsen: ”Personalized Medicine – How personal can we get?”, March 5th. PhD students who attend the seminars can get his approved as a one credit phd course. You just have to sign up on the course – FSKLI902!

 Furthermore, from this year on, the network meetings that are held and administered by the phd students will be administered as a phd course. This means that those who present their work at the meetings can sign up for the course and get one credit if they complete the course requirements (kurs-id FSKLI901). The network meetings will continue to be open for all phd students and provide food for your body and mind.

 Note that the deadline for course registrations is already February 1st. More info can be found at https://www.uib.no/rs/clinicalmedicine/activities/courses

 Stefan Johansson
For The Postgraduate School of Clinical Medical research

      Scientific publishing and Cristin

About ten years have passed since our government initiated result based distribution of a large part of the basic funding of universities and colleges.  Scientific publishing is a fundamental part of this.

Each article and every book chapter means not just status but also kroner and øre.  Thus, everyone is encouraged to verify that all works from 2013 have been added to Cristin.  This can be done here. You log in by choosing institution “University of Bergen”, and then use your regular user name and password.

There is not so much registration work left for each individual researcher.  Mostly everything is registered through the purchasing of references in Thomson ISI-database of scientific publishing.  If there are any problems with the registration, you may contact Kristian Jensen (kristian.jensen@k2.uib.no).  This assistance is offered if there are problems with the registration of scientific work which gives rbo-credits.  Thus, this does not include posters and abstracts.

The Norwegian Cristin-database has gathered most of research-Norway under one roof.  This makes the registration of co-publishing with researchers attached to other Norwegian institutions easier.  However, there might be published work that has not been included.  Special attention should be focused towards books and anthology contributions which are not covered well in the ISI-database.

According to the university library, quite a lot of scientific work remains in order to match the 2012-numbers.  Most of the scientific contributions are journal articles.  It is also claimed that so far the number of level 2 articles is a little low.

NB!  Our final deadline is February 15 for registering.  Also, do not forget to verify the registrations of your works thoroughly so that all details are correct – not least that your affiliation with Department of Clinical Science, University of Bergen, is included.

Roland

Happy New Year!  This period of the year is for many of us a time for reflection about results achieved in the year that has passed and also about what goals should be set for the New Year.  For us in the institute leadership it is also time for reporting what K2 achieved in 2013 within research, research education and teaching based on our allocated resources.  The teaching records function as an important guidance tool for the institute leadership both in regards to recruitment, priorities in the continuance of positions that have become vacant after retirement and the allocation of teaching activities.  However, the teaching records also serve as an important tool for the individual scientific employee so that he/she may document how much of his/her time is spent on teaching activities.  It is now time for registering teaching activities performed during autumn 2013.  Here is a link to the registration (http://colon.uib.no:8080/mofa/)

Christmas is approaching and it is time to look back and reflect upon what has happened during the first year at K2.  The institute was created on the basis of four clinical institutes and many of the efforts undertaken by the leadership have aimed to establish a common culture, and to introduce common routines and arrangements based on the best practices from the old institutes.  Because of this many people have had to adapt to a new structure.  I am impressed with how flexible many of you have been during this process.

K2 is now organized in 8 academic sections and 21 research groups, with leaders bestowed with mandates.  A technician process has been effectuated based on a rationale for how many technical positions are tied to the various research groups.  A strategy plan valid until 2015 has been created.  The HSE council is up and running.  The academic affairs section is joined with K1 and in total 82 courses are administered in medicine, odontology, pharmacy and nutrition.

There are currently 143 PhD candidates at K2 and a total of 26 public defences have been completed at the institute.  The Emeriti have done an excellent job as custodes.

Financial constraints have been a recurrent issue throughout the year.  Even though our finances are still tight, we can rejoice in the fact that the situation is now markedly better than it was just a few months ago.

These are just a few keywords covering what has happened this year.  There are still many challenges that await us, but for now we can all look forward to Christmas with a good conscience.

Last week we received the sad message that Senior Engineer Hildegunn Helle passed away, only 41 years old.  This reminds us how fragile life is, and that despite all the happenings at the institute, it is far more important to have peace with oneself and ones nearest relatives and acquaintances.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish all of you a peaceful Christmas and a Happy new Year!

Per

Last weekend we witnessed an unusually active response to K2Nytt from many parts of the institute.  You would think that it was the content of the newsletter which initiated a debate, but it was, in fact, the layout.  The comments touched upon communist newspapers, and even Mao was brought up, and let the hundred flowers bloom.   It is very nice that K2Nytt engages people, and several of the comments were indeed very good.

As for the layout of the newsletter it is, as Kristian pointed out, not just a simple matter of going back to the old format because the server on which this program was located, has been shut down.  But most of us agree that they layout needs work, and the K2-group is working on this issue, so hold out, hold out.

Otherwise I hope that people will be just as engaged in paying attention to the content, as the presentation, of the material in K2Nytt.  Comments are most welcome in the newsletter itself (yes, you may comment on each issue!) instead of through E-mails to everyone.

Per

In recent years a number of articles testing the reproducibility of preclinical biomedical research have been published in top-rated journals.  Surprisingly most of this could not be reproduced – not even by the researchers themselves!  There are two informative and commendable editorials shedding some more light on this issue – for more information see: Nature 23 May 2013 – p. 433 (six flags), and The Economist Oct 19, 2013 (Trouble at the lab).  Approximately 75% of the contents published in international scientific journals with peer-review and high impact factor, were difficult to reproduce.  What can the reason for this be?   Issues such as the increased pressure to publish, competition, and high ambitions of publishing way too early are discussed as potential contributions to this.  However, the researchers also point out that mistakes correct themselves, because other researchers continue to work on precisely this task.  This has to be regarded as a controversial attitude.  However, good advices were also provided as to how author, editor, referee, and the readers themselves could question the quality of the publication:

1. Was the experiment blinded?

2. Was the experiment repeated?

3. Were all results presented?

4. Were both positive and negative controls included?

5. Were used reagents subjected to quality control?

6. Were the statistical methods/tests optimal?

Happy reading and (personal?) reflection!

Roland

Mandatory teaching reporting

The teaching records (Undervisningsregnskapet) is an application developed so that the institutes may have full overview of the resources utilized in teaching activities.  The application is far from perfect, but it is nevertheless what will be used by both K2 and MOF when distributing new teaching tasks in the future.  That each and every one of us register completed teaching activities is mandatory, just as we register publications in Cristin.  You may like or dislike these types of registrations, but this is one of the mandatory work tasks included in a scientific employment position at MOF.  The registering is also of everyone’s interest as we document what we use our work time on, and whether or not we are fully booked or have vacant slots in our schedules.  The latter is very important now that new curriculum for the medicine study programme is under development, and several suggestions call for a substantial increase in small-group teaching sessions.The result from this spring’s teaching records is now ready, and shows that 33% of K2’s teaching capacity is utilized when only permanent scientific positions are taken into account.  Many have not registered their teaching activities, and, as a result, much of our teaching work is not made visible.  Deadline for this autumn’s teaching registration is now approaching.  I will strongly recommend all scientific employees to register their teaching!

Eva