A word from the Dean
In recent weeks, the Faculty of Science has been visited by several foundations, which have presented the upcoming notices with application deadlines in the spring.
Dear all
In recent weeks, the Faculty of Science has been visited by several foundations, which have presented the upcoming notices with application deadlines in the spring. It is particularly exciting to follow the Novo Nordisk Foundation (NNF), which is growing rapidly and will distribute significant funds over the coming years.
NNF is therefore developing new instruments, such as NERD and start-up and recruitment packages within the Science-Tech area, from which the Faculty of Science has already obtained funds. The Faculty of Science also has an interest in Education & Outreach, where NNF wants to support projects that work with spreading interest in STEM throughout the education system.
In some cases, we have had the opportunity to discuss specific research projects with the foundations, and I would like to thank you for the great presentations that you have contributed.
The message back from NNF is clear: The Faculty of Science should apply – the Faculty of Science offers lots of exciting research with great potential within NNF's area of interest.
We have had a good success rate in recent application rounds, including the most recent round, where researchers receive answers these weeks. Follow us here in the Newsletter and on Twitter, where we regularly inform about new grants.
At this time of year, intensive work is being done on SDU's budget, which will be presented at SDU's board meeting in December.
The Faculty of Science has just had a budget meeting with our Rector. He praised the Faculty of Science for the competent budgeting, which has become much more precise in recent years. He also noted that the Faculty of Science is budgeting for an increase in education income, which is especially attributed to the new education programme in Data Science and an approach to computer science, as well as our expectations for greater retention.
This year we are challenged on a lower consumption of external funds due to lower activity on projects both in the form of lower salary payments, but especially lower operations. Many funds will be pushed to next year, where we hope that it will be possible to complete the projects in full force.
Unfortunately, we have just received the latest figures for dropouts, and we are seeing an increase in more educations. We have long expected to see an effect of the pandemic on the programs, and we will now go through the individual programs to find possible reasons and possible measures to keep the students under the current conditions.
In December, the first Live Session around research in SDG will be held at the Faculty of Science. Many researchers have wanted to gain a better knowledge of SDG research at the Faculty of Science in order to be able to draw from each other's competencies in future projects.
So far, there will be three online sessions over the winter. Pro-Rector Sebastian Mernild will begin this series by sharing his ideas for SDG research at SDU.
I would like to thank everyone once again for the great efforts made to make teaching and research work under the continuing restrictions.
We are all getting tired of working from home, but I also sense that we are building routines and the online universe is being developed with new methods for conducting larger meetings, workshops and development work.
Feel free to share your experiences with colleagues. We are working on the secretariat to make a collection of examples of meeting forms, which will be shared at the Faculty of Science.
Marianne Holmer, dean