Foto: Eivind Senneset, UiB
Dear all,
It is appropriate to start with something that I believe to be good news. Although the accounts for 2022 have not been officially closed yet, it seems that we have almost managed to maintain a financial balance in 2022. We started 2022 with a forecast that said we would have a deficit of approx. 53 million. The accounting figures now indicate that at the end of 2022 we had a deficit of 46.8 million. It is a bit strange to say that this is good news, but at the same time it shows that we are on the right track in reducing our large deficit. It is very gratifying. If we were to be completely balanced in 2022, we should have been at 44.5, so we still spent more money than we received, but much better than expected.
2023 is well under way with new opportunities and challenges. For my part, I will pay particular attention to the following issues this year:
– We must mobilize even more towards bringing in extra funding for our research activity and we must ensure that BIO’s expenses are fully covered.
– We must intensify our work to reduce costs (both time and money) towards our educational activities, without the quality being reduced to a level we cannot vouch for. I belive we still have a lot to go on here.
– We still have to deal with the fact that we have job freeze at BIO, and a very limited financial room for action. This will affect us, but I definitely believe that we should be able to handle it. We have so much power, quality and courage in us that we will manage this.
– We have a fresh strategic plan and action plan, with many important points. We will use these plans actively going forward in the development of BIO.
Earlier in the week we submitted our own-evaluation of BIO to the large national “Biofag” evaluation. I believe that we have identified both strengths, weaknesses and challenges in our research activity. The next step is interviews with the expert panel. I’m looking forward to those. Many thanks to everyone who has contributed towards the submission deadline, especially Jon Vidar who has made a huge effort.
I wish you all a nice weekend.
Hilsen Ørjan
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Ørjan