Structural reform to polish our scientific profile

Indicators of research output and impact show a promising future for the University of Oulu. The amount of supplementary funding has increased, with funding derived from the Academy of Finland and Tekes (Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation) exhibiting excellent growth. Likewise, the volume of international publications has gone up steadily and the number of international staff and students is on the rise.

Nonetheless, we still face formidable challenges: both the domestic and international operating environments change at such a pace that to stay in place, we must run - and fast.

In terms of the performance indicators of the Ministry of Education and Culture, pressure mounts up to increase our international publishing activities and mobility. Moreover, funding from the framework programmes of the EU has shown no signs of improvement over past few years.

Central ideas underpinning EU’s Horizon 2020 programme fit very nicely the multidisciplinary profile of our university, offering us a great opportunity to a wide-scale utilization of the possibilities it offers. At the same time, participation in the programme serves to enhance our international networking activities.

As part of the structural development initiative, the university is reforming its faculty structure in a manner that goes a long way toward polishing our international scientific profile and strengthening our research capacity.  At the core of the reform is the subdivision of the three largest faculties into six more compact units.

This reform opens up a number of interesting avenues for research and teaching. For example, collaboration in Mining and Mineral Industry, one of our development areas, will be intensified not only within the faculties of Science and Technology, but also between them.

Focus areas will be further sharpened, in token of which the Faculty of Science is planning to pool its resources into space research and molecular biology research.

Physically, the largest changes will be experienced by Architecture and Biochemistry as they move from their current locations to new environments in Linnanmaa and Kontinkangas and become independent profit centres.

I believe that whole new opportunities will open up for architects to foster multidisciplinary collaboration and to improve their prospects of acquiring competition-based funding. In the same vein, the new unit for Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine has all the attributes required to carve a higher research profile. In addition, the transfer of Biochemistry to a new unit creates unprecedented opportunities to bring a natural science perspective into medical research projects.

Although the faculty structure reform does not directly affect the faculties of Education and Humanities or the Oulu School of Business, they are also committed to promoting research activities. Research on business and economics will be increased and enriched by the Martti Ahtisaari International Doctoral Programme. Similarly, Eudaimonia Institute, due to launch its activities this year, serves to advocate the human sciences.

As a result, the university’s profit centres will not only become more homogeneous, but administratively lighter, too. However, they must at all costs avoid fostering a silo mentality, for their success depends ultimately on making logical choices in selecting collaboration partners. As often as not, this involves individual researchers extending their cooperation networks across department and faculty boundaries.

Taina Pihlajaniemi
Vice-Rector for Research