Foto: Eivind Senneset
Dear colleagues,
Despite busy days with various processes related to the area reduction at BIO, everyday life goes on. The exam period is hectic and now truly underway. Monday was the deadline for submitting master’s theses, and in the halls at BIO, students are waiting to enter for oral exams in various courses. This is the first spring in many years that I haven’t had teaching and exams, and I know very well how much work everyone puts in during this period. This is an impressive effort at all levels, and I wish everyone the best of luck in the coming weeks. At the same time, many have also submitted project applications with a deadline last week. Fantastic work – I’m keeping my fingers crossed for all of you and hope that many new and exciting projects will come our way!
Many at BIO attended the Faculty’s Spring seminar last Wednesday and Thursday. The theme on the first day was “Geopolitics and Academic Freedom,” and we heard powerful and insightful presentations from Professor Hilmar Mjelde (HVL), Professor Ingunn Lunde (UiB), and Tom-Epen Møller (RCN). Day two was devoted to presentations of research at NT, giving us a look into many strong and solid projects. From BIO, Tom Langbehn gave a talk on “Food conveyor belts in the ocean,” and Mari Eilertsen shared insights into “Biological research in the deep sea”. Brilliantly delivered by both!
On Friday, I attended the Michael Sars Symposium 2025, where I had the pleasant task of giving the opening remarks. The theme this year was “Decoding signals and unveiling architectures, from molecules to organisms.” I bumped into several participants from BIO there, and Ida H. Steen was one of the invited speakers with her presentation “Extremozymes from Arctic vents.” I can only encourage even more from BIO to attend next year. This is a high-quality research symposium right in our neighborhood – highly recommended!
As previously mentioned, we have also started a working group on the reorganization at BIO. We are looking at “faggrupper”, research groups, and the leadership group. However, the much-discussed area reduction process is taking up a lot of time, thus we see the need to postpone the reorganization process a bit. We will return with more information about the updated plan shortly.
Hope everyone had a pleasant weekend!
Ståle