Dear colleagues,
At the Faculty Day on Wednesday, prizes in various categories were distributed. As already mentioned in the last newsletter, our Department did very well with one of the two prizes for the best PhD thesis awarded to Xiaozheng (Teeny) Liu, the prize for the best research and innovation environment awarded to the Translational cell signalling and metabolism group headed by Thomas Arnesen and one of the three prizes for excellent measures in teaching was given to Tine Veronica Karlsen. In addition, Olga Therese Ousdal was awarded the Falchs junior prize. Congratulations to all of you!
The ones of you who follow the Norwegian news about higher education have probably noticed the debate about postdoc positions giving the impression that these are bad positions to be in with no future perspectives. While it is clear that most postdocs will never become principle investigators (PI) because there are many more postdoc positions than PI positions, I have many friends, both inside and outside academia, who consider their postdoc period the best time in their research life. This is the time when one can fully concentrate on research free of other hassles like collecting credits, carrying out administrative duties, having the responsibility for a research group, or writing and defending a thesis. My advice to our postdocs would therefore be to enjoy the exiting research projects you are carrying out in an international and multicultural environment. Maybe with some luck your academic dream will work out, but if not, it does not mean that that the postdoc period was wasted. Unemployment among academics is generally very low and there are many other positions inside and outside academia that are interesting. Last week, I was invited to present at the Drug Discovery Chemistry conference in San Diego which was mainly attended by researchers in industry, and I was impressed by the exiting research that is going on in some companies.
Further, I would like to remind everyone about the IBM-day on May 2. The program of the day will come by e-mail. We will also have a strategy day for all faculty members at the department on June 1st. Please reserve the date, more details will follow.
As you are probably noticing, we are trying out a new format for the newsletter starting with this edition. With this, we hope to make the newsletter even easier to read, less time consuming to prepare, and better to archive. We hope that you enjoy the new experience.
Have a nice weekend,
