Dear colleagues,
The last weeks the weather has been a bit rough, a perfect opportunity to stay indoors and get some work done. And work has been done!
Wednesday last week we handed in the EVALMEDHELSE self-evaluation forms to the Research Council of Norway. This evaluation takes place every 10 years and is extensive. We basically report on all the activities of the department and research groups/units the last 10 years. This includes the societal and sector impact of our work, strategy plans, collaborations, research, teaching, economy, funding, SWOT-analysis, how we comply with rules and regulations and much more. We delivered one report for the department, and six reports for six different research groups/units, plus a document with three impact cases. If you want to have a look at these documents, they can be found in the Teams channel “Institutt for biomedisin” → “EVALMEDHELSE” → “Documents submitted to NFR”. Gathering all the information needed and creating these documents (about 200 pages in total) was a real team effort. I would like to thank everybody that has contributed to this finished product, which I think turned out really good!
The accounting for 2023 for our department is now finalized. The budget for 2023 did not look good, but after taking several measures during the year we managed to end the year almost in balance (not including negative transfers from 2022)! Everybody contributed to this in different ways, and I think we should be very proud of this accomplishment!
The economy for 2024 will also be very strict, and our budget indicates big red numbers, but we will keep working hard and smart and improve as much as we think is possible and responsible.
We had the Dean, Per Bakke, visiting us at the faculty lunch two weeks ago. He talked about the economic situation at the faculty. Bottom line is that the faculty and departments must improve the economy quite a bit, and a project group is appointed with the mandate to suggest how. Frits Thorsen will be our representative in this project group. If you have input/ideas on how the economy can be improved, please approach him. This project group work starts today (February 5) and has May 15 as deadline.
