Letter from the head of department - december 2023

Hello all employees at SLU Aqua. In the video below I will tell you some good news for the whole department. The video has English subtitles that you need to make sure to turn on. After that, you can read my entire letter in text form.

Watch more videos on SLU Aquas own channel at SLU Play

Staff news

During the autumn, our new communicator Josefine Karlsson started at SLU Aqua. Josefine is based at Ultuna and will work with the internal communication but also a certain amount with the external communication. Sofia Bureborn is also back after trying other work. Sofia will work with the external communication, as well as working half her time for the ship unit. Welcome Josefine and welcome back Sofia.   

Sophia Gustafsson-Renes is back after her parental leave and is the one to whom you should send contracts and more and who requires prefect signatures. Hamede Tajaddodi, who replaced Sophia, now works for other departments at SLU. Welcome back Sophia and thank you to Hamede for your contribution at SLU Aqua.   

I would also like to take this opportunity to extend a warm welcome to all new employees at SLU Aqua.   

The assignment from HaV (The Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management) 

We have received the preliminary list of project assignments for 2024 from HaV. If we exclude the co-financing for DCF (Data Collection Framework, the EU's data collection program), the order is SEK 114 million, which can be compared with SEK 99 million on the preliminary list for 2023. Overall, this means an increase of 15%. Right now we are analyzing the order at project level, in order to deliver feedback to HaV.

A very welcome piece of news is that the deficit within DCF has been resolved. The Government Office has announced that HaV will be responsible for full reimbursement of costs. This means that there will be a return to the situation up until 2021. This is an incredible relief for everyone who has contributed knowledge to solve the problem.

On December 5, a group from SLU Aqua attended a workshop at HaV on how to jointly develop ecosystem-based management and the knowledge base it requires. The meeting was positive and there is a strong common will. We will report back as this work develops.

Operations

We have two researchers who have succeeded in this year's calls at VR (The Swedish Research Council) and Formas. Christoffer Griffiths has received a grant for Early career researchers. Charlotte Berkström has received a grant for international research from VR/Forma's Sustainability and Resilience call. Congratulations to both of you!

As far as the Fisheries Experiment Station in Älvkarleby is concerned, the situation is unchanged. Full funding is still lacking. SLU has ongoing discussions with the power companies, government representatives including the government office in order to find a solution that many are satisfied with until there is a review of the water verdict according to the national plan.

Our master courses have been adapted to make them eligible for students on the two programs Sustainable development and Sustainable food systems. These are very popular programs, and we hope that this will lead to more students on our courses.

Economy

The budget for 2024 is ready and submitted. We have set a budget with a turnover of SEK 306 million for 2024. In 2023, we calculated the turnover at SEK 265 million, which means an increase of 12%. The percentage markup for the total of the common costs (OH) remains unchanged, while the premises costs increase slightly, which is completely in accordance with the previously laid out premises supply plan.