Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)

Basic facts

The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) applied for eight SRAs and received five.

Furthermore, KTH receives funding as co-applicant from five other funded SRAs.

In total, KTH was allocated approximately 579 million Swedish Crowns by the government for the SRAs (2010–2014).

During 2014, the SRA funding corresponded to 6% of the basic funding for education and research given to KTH from the government.

General comments

KTH appears to have been strategic in applying for SRA funding and had a high success rate. It can be noted, however, that the SRAs at KTH are very different in size, focus and international scientific standing. KTH focused on faculty recruitment and building up research infrastructure, however, it is not clear if or how the SRA funding is prioritised to the specific needs of the individual SRAs. KTH is historically strong, especially

strategic prioritization, i.e. the management hopes to gradually move some of the funding to other strategic areas.

Strategic management and use of the SRA funding – Good

KTH has strategically used the SRA funding for staff renewal and strengthening within the specified areas and expects the ‘fingerprint’ of these recruitments to be visible in the staff profile for many years to come. There is awareness and a focus in the KTH leadership on ‘cross-school/disciplinary’ recruitments and they are in the process of identifying 8 broad areas for 12 new positions funded by core resources which will announced soon.

The SRA funded recruitments also have allowed for the development of new areas identified by the steering committees for the SRAs. The SRAs, together with research platforms, are used to promote best practice and for sharing experience. These environments are encouraged to develop new proposals to other funding sources (i.e. EU H2020).

University outcomes and excellence – Good/inadequate  

While the KTH management generally feels that there is too much piecemeal funding initiatives in Sweden (and would prefer to see more unrestricted core funding), there is the general impression from the KTH leadership that the SRA funding scheme has worked well. KTH has both excellent (MolbioKTH, EvetKTH) and rather disappointing SRAs. It is not clear to what extent KTH leadership has strategically used the SRA funding to strengthen the weakest of the SRAs. Indeed, one could get the impression that the SRA

environments have received the funding and been left alone to establish the criteria upon which their success should be determined. Publication rates have increased in all 5 of the KTH SRAs (although citation

bibliometrics indicate that some of the SRAs still have a considerable way to go in order to attain the international ‘cutting edge’). Research from the SRAs has been to an acceptable degree incorporated in teaching, although education at KTH is organised around ‘programmes’ rather than courses which may impact the rate of renewal and incorporation of new research results. A new joint (between 3 universities) Master’s programme is beginning in 2015 in association with SciLifeLab. This appears to be a direct result of the SRA funding scheme.

Added value of the SRA funding instrument – Good

There has been clear added value of the SRA at KTH both in relation to the recruitment of younger staff and in the form of increased collaboration within the SRA partners. This collaboration is especially obvious in relation to MolBioKTH (SciLifeLab).

Summaries of the individual SRAs

ITKKTH

Performance: Good Strategy: Good Added value: Good

Based on the material made available to the panel, this appears to be an internationally competitive group although some areas publish less actively than others. The SRA opportunity was used to good advantage as it has helped KTH to address the new research questions emerging as ICT increasingly becomes embedded into other fields. SRA funds have been focused on recruiting (15) junior faculty, where targeted individuals have been offered attractive startup packages. An international Masters in Embedded Systems (as a component of EIT ICT Labs) has been initiated using SRA funding. Focus areas include definition of 5G communications technology and working with medical sciences and transport to understand the implications and opportunities in this area. There is good international collaboration (i.e. EPFL in Europe, UC Berkeley, MIT in the US) as well as collaborations with industry. The group works well with the LiU ICT SRA and with relevant groups in Lund

but does not support the merging of these groups. All faculty supervise graduates and undergraduates and support the incorporation of systems thinking into engineering education generally at KTH.

ProdKTH

Performance: Inadequate Strategy: Inadequate

Added value: Good/inadequate

The SRA funding has been used in an effort to transition this production research environment from classical mechanical engineering into ‘the modern age’. While there is still a focus on machining and manufacture, facilities and the approach have been updated (approx. 40% of the SRA funding has been used for

infrastructure, i.e. (clean) lab). The group appears to have considerable industrial collaboration but does not score highly in terms of numbers or impact of basic research contributions. It is argued, however, that the SRA has been helping to direct more attention towards publication and publication rate has been increasing during the SRA period and, indeed, the publication rate has increased during the funding period. Through

collaboration with Saab, the group is working to increase the technological knowledge in Brazil. Within Sweden, the group collaborates with the prod SRA at Chalmers, but these two groups apparently have different foci where CTH works with design theory and KTH on production theory. Aside from some interaction with ITKKTH, there seems to be little interaction between this and other SRAs.

TransKTH

Performance: Good/inadequate Strategy: Good/inadequate Added value: Good

The SRA funding for this area has been used for international recruitment and to support research aimed at being able to support future policy (i.e. topics not yet on the political agenda). The societal value of this research area is aimed more at policy-making than industry. While there are quite a number of research publications coming out of this group, they are not highly cited internationally. One focus for the area has been developing Smart City Logistics in Sweden and the SRA funding has allowed support of a visiting professor from Barcelona in this area. Internationally, the group has had some activity related to greening urban transport in China where Eliason is a visiting professor at a Chinese think tank supporting the ministry. The Panel was concerned that this group has produced relatively few PhDs in recent years and seems to be experiencing a recruitment problem. There appears to be some peripheral contact to/collaboration with the TransCTH SRA but the Panel notes that the foci of the two groups are very different. Transitioning to a new transport system is vital for societal development and this is a very important research area both for Sweden and internationally.

The Panel was concerned that there may be unrealised potential in this group and they could contribute more actively to this critical societal transition.

EvetKTH

Performance: Excellent/good Strategy: Excellent/good Added value: Excellent

The research in this group appears to be internationally competitive. The SRA funding has enabled development of infrastructure and collaboration. Their strategy has been to identify the best groups from a development and exploitation perspective and connect them across the 4 participating universities. They have promoted the use of e-science in these communities and systematically bridged the gap between tool developers and the actual users. They feel that SRA funding has increased their capacity to work with industry and they

been particularly strategic and has encouraged the community to develop ‘flagship’ projects not included in the original proposal.

MolbioKTH (SciLifeLab) Performance: Excellent Strategy: Excellent Added value: Excellent

There seems little doubt that the SRA funding has been critical to developing a genuine collaboration between the 3 participating (Stockholm) universities. This initiative receives funding from several sources, but none of the other sources seem to incentivise the collaboration between partners to the extent that the SRA funding has achieved. The scientific publications coming out of this initiative rank competitively internationally and there is clear added value for Sweden in creating a centralised facility housing the expensive infrastructure required for molecular biology. The external expert evaluations of SciLifeLab expressed concern over management of the KTH part of the SRA as the Scientific Advisory Board has never met in full. However, this appears to have been a conscious and justified decision to delay the meeting until a single SAB across all participating universities could be created. The first physical meeting of this common SAB is scheduled (Feb. 2015). Both clinical and environmental genomics are areas that will hopefully be developed in coming years.