A word from the Dean, October 2025

The autumn term begins, but not quite as usual

Yet again the day arrived, when all students returned to campus – new and old alike – and indeed, it was a beautiful day! It is always special when the semester begins and the students are back in place, like it is supposed to be. It marks the start of a new semester and with it the start of everything else that happens at the university. However, this autumn semester does not begin quite as usual. Based on the research policy bill, the Swedish Research Council and Vinnova have been tasked with designing various calls for research proposals. These include strategic research areas, clusters of excellence for groundbreaking technology and, most recently, a call for proposals concerning the strategic recruitment of assistant professors. The latter is a Swedish Research Council call for proposals scheduled for January 2026. All of these initiatives, which were announced in the research policy bill, are now coming at a rapid pace. It has been and continues to be quite intensive work for many of our researchers to prepare outlines and plans for applications.

Two applications from the faculty, seeking network grants for planning future clusters of excellence, have just been approved by the Swedish Research Council: ‘Resilient agriculture through polyphenols from renewable biomass’ and ‘Data collection with next-generation technology in extreme polar regions.’ Congratulations to Mika Sipponen and Martin Jakobsson on these grants. This means that the main work of designing VR's future call for proposals on future technology clusters is now in motion – this too will proceed quickly, and the call is expected this spring. Once the call has been formulated, it is important that our researchers are active in identifying opportunities to apply. It is important to point out that it is not a requirement to have been awarded funding for network grants or even to have participated in that call, to be able to apply for funding for technology clusters in the next stage. The upcoming call will therefore be completely open to new projects.

The work of formulating applications within the designated strategic research areas is ongoing and also involves a great deal of work for those who have been appointed with the task. Eight strategic research areas were identified in the research bill. The intention is to increase funding for those universities whose research environments are considered to have the best chances of developing a particular strategic research area to the highest international level.

Another upcoming call for proposals from the Swedish Research Council concerns the strategic recruitment of assistant professors, in which higher education institutions can nominate candidates who have been or will be recruited as such. The call for applications will open in January 2026, and time flies so it is important that the university formulates its strategy and a process for handling this as soon as possible. This call for applications is not without complexities. How can we nominate a candidate while also guaranteeing them a position as an assistant professor? Questions surrounding this issue often arise in discussions with my fellow deans around the country. It should also be noted that the outcome of the call for applications will be an indicator for the allocation of future basic funding to the university, which is why this particular call for applications is doubly important! At the same time, the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation has decided to pause the Wallenberg Academy Fellows (WAF) programme from 2026. Stockholm University and our faculty have been very successful in these calls, which indicates that we have good processes for finding top candidates, and I hope and believe that this will also be the case in the Swedish Research Council's upcoming call.

So, there are lots of new developments on the research funding front, and most of them are essentially positive for us, even if it may feel like a lot to take in all at once. Despite all this, other activities are continuing as usual, and new and old students are back on campus. I wish you all a pleasant autumn!

Lena