News from NJ faculty board June 14

Recruitments

The faculty board decided, among other things, to recruit a professor in plant physiology.

Additionally, the board decided on the recruitment of the following senior lecturers:

• soil chemistry
• behavioral economics
• biochemistry
• economics

An associate senior lecturer in soil mechanics and tillage will also be recruited. As a separate matter, the board also decided on the recruitment of an associate senior lecturer within the framework of an initiative funded by KAW (see below).

Associate senior lecturer in "Data-Driven Evolution and Biodiversity"

SLU is one of eleven universities in Sweden that share the funding provided by SciLifeLab and the Wallenberg National Program. SLU has been allocated funds to recruit two research leaders (employed asassociate senior lecturers), and one of them will be at NJ. Each research leader is accompanied by funds for two postdocs and two doctoral students. The other research leader has already been recruited and is located at the Faculty of Forestry.

NJ's Faculty Board has now decided to recruit an associate senior lecturer in data-driven evolution and biodiversity. The initiative is expected to provide a very powerful contribution to SLU and the NJ faculty.

The recruitment is financed by SciLifeLab and the Wallenberg National Program for Data-Driven Life Science (DDLS), with the aim of creating a world-leading Swedish cluster. The program runs for twelve years with a planned budget of approximately 3.1 billion kronor from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.

Roadmap for Food Research at NJ Faculty

The Faculty Board has discussed the Faculty Management's proposal for a roadmap for the research field of food science at the Department of Molecular Sciences. The proposal outlines a direction that involves a certain refocusing of the field, with the core areas being food chemistry and food biotechnology. This ultimately implies a change in the subject areas that will exist within the department. As part of this change, the proposal suggests the need to recruit two new senior lecturers (or associate senior lecturers): one in food chemistry and one in the related field of food biotechnology. The board plans to make a decision on the roadmap at its meeting in September.

The background to the roadmap is the expected retirements within the current subject areas at the department. In connection with these types of changes, the faculty always conducts a review to determine any necessary adjustments. An investigation of the research field carried out in 2022 also forms the basis for the proposed roadmap.