New TTO division manager to strengthen processes and collaboration

Three focus areas
With Lisbeth Guldbæk Smith as the driving force, TTO has rolled out the legal partner scheme to the entire university. This means that most of the researchers that TTO helps are assigned a legal partner, who will help with contracts and agreements and advise on legal issues. “In our experience, this has a positive impact on the work of our lawyers and leads to good results in the research environments. The lawyers gain an understanding of specific subject areas, and the academic environments feel confident that their legal partner has the necessary field-specific knowledge – leading to peace of mind and trust in the advice offered. And as an added advantage, the lawyers also get to know the researchers’ collaboration partners,” says Lisbeth Guldbæk Smith.

Fast case processing
Lisbeth Guldbæk Smith will also continue to focus on reducing waiting times and ensuring swifter case processing. Waiting times have been reduced a lot in the past couple of years, and work on the vast majority of agreements starts within one to two weeks. Waiting times are longer for about three to eight per cent of our total portfolio with variations between the various environments. This is often to do with the complexity of the projects. “But importantly, total case processing times are also affected by our partners whom we rely on to move swiftly. For various reasons, they’re not always able to do so. So delays are not usually down to us. But it is a focus area, and we’re going to find out how we can work more efficiently. And I’m actually pretty sure that we’ll get there,” says the new division manager.

Analysis of processes and pitfalls – and AI

Lisbeth Guldbæk Smith likes to work from data and believes that TTO needs to keep a keen eye on its own processes and workflows – which must be analysed to identify patterns. And then you can adjust the workflows. “We need to be able to handle our workload with our existing resources, which is why we have launched a project that is investigating the possible use of AI. But it’s not simple – security has to be top-notch,” says Lisbeth Guldbæk Smith.

Cross-disciplinary collaboration in AU Research Support
Lisbeth Guldbæk Smith is also looking forward to strengthening the collaboration between the three AU Research Support offices. “We need to become even better at drawing on each other’s resources, both at management and employee level. It makes perfect sense for us to work more closely together and to have a team, for example, for our EU-related activities and coordinator projects.  According to the division manager, GDPR is another area where it makes sense to work together.“In the management team, we’re curious about the possibilities for creating  synergies through acting as a single unit where everybody can chip in in areas of common interest. And I will work to ensure that we succeed together in supporting research in the best possible way,” concludes Lisbeth Guldbæk Smith.