Greetings from the department – 20. May 2022

Foto: Eivind Senneset, UiB

Hello everyone,
I hope you all had a good May 17 celebration in fine weather. I had the pleasure of joining the parade with the rest of UiB and it was nice that we were a small group there from BIO. We would like to be more, so next year we will mobilize properly.

Yesterday I sent out an overview of the areas we want to sell to the Estate and Facilities Management Division (EIA). There are still some clarifications needed before everything is completely clear, especially in relation to MBS (Espegrend) and the areas in the A-block. We will have a new meeting with EIA and the Faculty next week. In any case, I expect that we can start moving soon. We have an ambition to get most things done before the summer, but we will of course take into account holiday arrangements, exam completion and of course lab operations. We will be back soon with more info and detailed planning of the process further.

Frank Nilsen has received a new EU project. It is very gratifying, congratulates Frank. Now that the NFR seems to have to tighten up, the EU will become even more important as a source of funding for our activities in the future. I have mentioned earlier that we at BIO should turn more of our efforts towards the EU, and in this connection we are arranging an information meeting on EU funding, together with the FIA, on 30 May. I hope for a good turnout and that we see the opportunities here.

Good news: BIO received funding from Meltzer to arrange a academic-social day. We need that. The focus will be on external funding, especially the EU. We aim to arrange this in early autumn.

There is full pressure on the submission of master’s theses, with a deadline of 1 June, and the completion of the master’s examination at the moment. As you know, we will have an internal examiner for each master’s exam, and I ask you all to join the ranks when you are asked by the study administration. And I thank you all who are involved for an outstanding effort in implementing this for the benefit of our master’s students and BIO.

Have a good weekend everyone,

Ørjan