New Head of Department: “I care passionately about the future of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine"

Why did you apply for the position?

“Firstly, I care passionately about the future of ICMM and wish to see it thrive as a top-quality department that strives for excellence in research and teaching. Secondly, I held a senior leadership role at the University of Oxford before moving to SUND. Similarly, at SUND, I have been leading a DNRF Center of Excellence in ICMM for the past 10 years. Both positions have given me the vision and experience of running units or organizations in a university context.

I also feel that I have reached a stage of my career when I can use my experience to support my departmental colleagues in their goal to become nationally and internationally recognized. I feel honored by being offered the role. I see this as a new and quite daunting personal challenge, but I have confidence that my departmental colleagues will support me in the coming years.”

If you should choose three things to focus on as new Head of Department at ICMM, what would they be?

1. Strengthen still further our range of world class research programs
   In our most recent external evaluation, the site visit panel concluded that ‘there are many examples of world leading science in ICMM providing a powerful framework to promote the highest levels of ambition among all ICMM groups and individuals’. We should strive to maintain the excellent research that already exists in ICMM and support our cohort of younger researchers to develop research programs that will be internationally leading in the future.
   
   
2. Provide a range of excellent teaching courses
   We should ensure that the delivery of our teaching has excellence as standard and that it evolves alongside the introduction of new digital and AI-driven tools that will provide a clear opportunity to enhance the teaching experience for students and teachers alike.
   
   
3. Expand our innovation initiatives
   We should also help to promote the necessary cultural change amongst our academic staff that will permit us to prioritize translation of our excellent basic research into innovations that will have societal impact.

“Ian is an excellent researcher and university manager with international experience, which makes him the ideal candidate for the job. During the recruitment process, Ian was described as “chief” of ICMM, and as Head of Department, he will no doubt bring stability to the Department.

For many years, ICMM has been committed to team-based departmental management, and this will continue, as Ian doesn’t have a high-level command of Danish. As Dean, I support international VIPs in management positions at SUND, as I believe international perspectives and experiences will improve the quality of our work.” – Dean Bente Merete Stallknecht.

What challenges do you see for the department?

ICMM has been particularly successful in supporting talented young scientists to obtain competitive early career fellowships. As I see it, a challenge moving forward is to continue to support these people, whom we believe represent the academic leaders of the future, to become embedded in ICMM and continue to thrive both as world class researchers and inspirational teachers.

I also think that the budgetary reform and the administrative reform are challenging: if SUND were an airplane, the captain might well be announcing that ‘we are experiencing severe turbulence and so please fasten your seatbelt’. The introduction of these two reforms in quick succession has brought numerous challenges for departments, not least concerning how to support and maintain our current range of excellent research and teaching activities.

And finally, being a foreigner lacking advanced Danish language skills is bound to be a challenge. However, I hope that my range of international contacts and experience will offer some alternative benefits to SUND.