A central part of a research council's work is external monitoring and analysis of the quality development of the Faculty's research. As an advisory body to the Faculty Board of Medicine and the Faculty management, the Research Council shall stimulate a well-founded and proactive approach to issues relating to, for example, research funding, strategic initiatives and recruitment.
"I hope that the council will be a natural and important part of the Faculty's research strategy process and that through the work of the council, we will gradually get a better and more high-resolution picture of the conditions for research at the Faculty and what affects our impact. Through this, we can hopefully identify measures that can improve the conditions for our researchers and strengthen the quality and impact of our research”, says Jonas Larsson.
Targeted initiatives
In the Swedish government's Research and Innovation Bill for the years 2025-2028 (link to the Government´s web site, in Swedish), the government presents its research and innovation policy. The bill contains a number of targeted initiatives such as the establishment of new strategic research areas (SFOs) and an evaluation of our existing SFOs, as well as extensive investments in special excellence clusters for ground-breaking technologies, all of which place special demands on strategies and coordination at the Faculty.
”A research council creates the conditions for in-depth work on research strategic issues that currently do not fit within the work of the Faculty Board of Medicine or the Faculty management."
Research development
The Council is also expected to follow up and propose measures regarding the guidelines for quality assurance and quality development of research at Lund University (link to Staff pages, in Swedish), recently adopted by the Vice-Chancellor of Lund University.
”Here, the council has an important role in monitoring and analysing the Faculty's research output and impact, as well as the outcome regarding grants from major national and international funding bodies.”
Other important issues that the council will address are: the situation of young researchers, the conditions for clinical research and external recruitment at different levels. These are key factors for our future skills supply and competitiveness.
Sharpen competitiveness
"Research funding is a particularly important issue, not least in the currently tough economic situation and when the approval rates for project funding from, for example, the Swedish Research Council, have fallen in recent years. Here we need to see how we can become more competitive in terms of EU funding and the special targeted funding investments from the Research and Innovation Bill.”
The council consists of approximately twelve members. The chair is the Dean or Vice-Dean. The council also includes representatives from the Faculty management with responsibility for research issues, teacher representatives from the Departments, representatives from Future Faculty, Region Skåne and student representatives. As a rule, the Research Council will meet three to four times per semester.
Lots to gain
"The council will work continuously with the major issues of funding, research quality and impact, and based on this, outline proposals for measures for the Faculty management and the Faculty board. In parallel with this, ongoing work is being done on prioritisation matters regarding nominations for certain grants and other initiatives. For example, during autumn, we have worked on prioritising KAW applications and also participated in the evaluation of applicants for the University's major visiting professor initiative.
”I´m very happy that we finally have a research council in place at the Faculty. We have a lot to gain from this, not least through a better understanding of the internal and external factors that affect our ability to conduct high-quality and meaningful research."