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3TU visits KTH Stockholm

Wednesday, 20 February 2013
The boards of TU Delft, TU Eindhoven and Twente University paid a successful visit to the Royal Technical University (KTH) on March 7. A variety of topics were discussed around the table and we found out that we face similar challenges.

Both 3TU and KTH are very active in the Knowledge Innovation Communities (KIC’s) and we discussed how we could simplify the organization of the KIC’s and the benefits they can bring to our professors. In the second wave expected for 2014 KTH en 3TU, through Medical Delta, are part of the same consortium. On strengthening the relation with industry and society KTH was inspired by the PDEng degree that 3TU offers through the Stan Ackermans Institute and is currently implementing a similar degree. Furthermore collaboration on engineering education was discussed.

KTH participates in a partnership called Nordic Five Tech (N5T) that is similar to the 3TU partnership and has a strong focus on joint educational programs with the aim to attract more international students. Apart from the benefits of these partnerships for education and research, these partnerships can play a stronger role in Europe. Teaming-up these partnerships under the umbrella of CESAER should enable us to strengthen our position in Europe.

It was very impressive to see how Sweden makes firm choices for investments in future research. SciLifeLab is one of three facilities in Sweden and is collaboration between Karolinska Institute, Stockholm University, Uppsala University and KTH. SciLifeLab brings together a rapid growing group in biotechnology with state-of-the-art facilities.

At the end of the day the tenure-track systems of each of the universities were discussed in depth leading to the conclusion that staff mobility among trusted universities like KTH and 3TU could add value to each of our tenure-track systems.

For a report by the KTH-president on our visit see:

http://www.kth.se/blogs/president/2013/03/visit-from-leading-dutch-universities-of-technology/