News from the Senior Management Team no. 13/2019

Names of the members of the Committee for Diversity and Gender Equality 

The faculties have decided who will be representing them in the university's new Committee for Diversity and Gender Equality. Each faculty has appointed an academic staff representative and a head of department/school to sit on the committee:

From Arts:

  • Professor Dorthe Staunæs, Danish School of Education
  • Head of School Bjarke Paarup, School of Culture and Society  

From Aarhus BSS:

  • Associate Professor Natalie Munkholm, Department of Law
  • Head of Department Jacob K. Eskildsen, Department of Management

From Health:

  • Associate Professor Ebbe Bødtkjer, Department of Biomedicine
  • Head of Department Siri Beier Jensen, Department of Dentistry and Oral Health

From ST:

  • Professor Klaus Mølmer, Department of Physics and Astronomy
  • Head of Department Michelle H. Williams, Department of Food Science

Deputy Director Anne Behnk, AU HR, also sits on the committee. The decision to set up this new university-wide committee for diversity and gender quality was made in the wake of the conference on gender balance earlier this year. All eleven members have now been appointed, and the first meeting will take place on 1 July. 

One of the committee's first tasks will be to draft a new action plan for diversity to replace the current plan from 1 January 2020. 


Good input from staff and students on splitting ST

The internal consultation on the proposal to split Science and Technology into two faculties is now over. Rector Brian Bech Nielsen is very grateful for the many good and constructive comments from staff and students.

The AU Board will discuss the proposal at its meeting on 7 June. If the Board approves the proposal, a number of working groups will be set up in the autumn to submit proposals for administrative support for the two new faculties. In addition, a process will be launched to appoint deans to the two faculties. 


MatchPoints: More than 600 participants learned more about management and leadership

Never before have so many attended the MatchPoints seminar, which this year brought together almost 650 researchers and practitioners from across the public, private and voluntary sectors from 23-25 May to gain new insights into good management and leadership. 

Among the speakers were HRH Crown Prince Frederik, EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, the CEO of Salling Group Per Bank, and professor of business and organisation psychology, Arnold Bakker from Erasmus University Rotterdam.

MatchPoints was organised this year by the Crown Prince Frederik Centre for Public Leadership, under the direction of Professor Lotte Bøgh Andersen. 

Find more highlights and insights from the conference on LinkedIn under Crown Prince Frederik Center for Public Leadership and AU profiles, including video comments from EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, Social Democrat Nicolai Wammen, and chief municipal executive Niels Haberman from the City of Aarhus, who also co-organised Match Points. 


Professor Ann Wenzel receives Rigmor and Carl Holst-Knudsen Award for Scientific Research

On Wednesday 29 May, Professor Ann Wenzel received one of the oldest and most prestigious honorary awards in Danish academia: the Rigmor and Carl Holst-Knudsen Award for Scientific Research. Ann Wenzel was lauded as a true pioneer in her field: oral radiology, with a special focus on digital x-ray systems. 

Ann Wenzel works at the Department of Dentistry and Oral Health at AU, and her latest research involves CT scans, with particular focus on children and adolescents: a field of research in which Wenzel has a leading position internationally.

At the same event, the Aarhus University Research Foundation presented its talent award of DKK 50,000 to five PhD students who have distinguished themselves exceptionally. The prize-winners are:

> Bo Hønge, who has researched the two types of HIV virus and, among other things, identified an improved method to defrost frozen blood samples.

> Alexander Holm Kiilerich, who has significantly improved the precision of measurements made using quantum sensors.

> Suthan Krishnarajan has investigated what makes an impact if an economic crisis strikes (or does not strike) the political stability of a country.

> Pierre du Plessis has studied the Kalahari landscape from the perspective of the native San people, and he offers new insights into how humans co-exist with nature.

> Kristina Korning Wedege has researched into replacing metals in large flow batteries with organic substances.


University director's blog: Examples of implementation of the digitisation strategy in practice

In this month’s blog, Arnold Boon describes an exciting example of how AU's digitisation initiative has been implemented in practice. He also highlights some of the main messages in the initiative, and how it affects staff. 


New checklist helps employees improve data security 

Data security has extremely high priority at Aarhus University, and a checklist will now make it easier for university employees to see what they should be doing to protect our data. The background for the checklist is the many security breaches that are caused by employee error and lack of knowledge.


Calendar

The senior management team publishes a weekly newsletter This includes details of decisions and initiatives from the senior management team, plus current activities and discussions.