Society needs strong and resilient universities
Column
All year round, Medfarm’s skilled researchers promote and comment on new research results in news channels and events, says Karin Forsberg Nilsson, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine. Photo: Mikael Wallerstedt.
Halfway through the semester, research and teaching are in full swing. Walking between our campuses, I breathe in the cool autumn air. Distances are short at Medfarm, and we easily move between the BMC, Hubben, MTC, Rudbeck, Uppsala University Hospital, and Segerstedt Building. As Dean, I frequently walk between the buildings. It gives time to reflect on large and small questions.
The big concerns of our time are difficult ones. How can we combat disease, violence and war, solve the climate crisis and safeguard democracy? The list can be disheartening. But we cannot allow ourselves to be dispirited, we have an essential task. Universities are society’s cornerstones of research and education.
We do research and we teach about complex matters. We make our results available, while emphasizing that yet novel findings may overturn prevailing truths. Through independent, high-quality research, and research-linked education, for generation after generation, new knowledge is created that can solve important problems.
Many years of research quickly produced a vaccine.
This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, awarded for research that enabled the mRNA vaccine against COVID-19, is a fine example. The vaccine was developed in record time, but the research behind it had been long in the making. Fifteen years after Kariko’s and Weissman’s breakthrough in 2005, the first mRNA vaccine was approved.
I had the privilege of presenting this at the event “The Nobel Prize in 60 minutes”, which brought over 100 people to the University Main Building on a recent Thursday evening. Naturally, the Nobel Prize puts research in the limelight. However, all year round, Medfarm’s skilled researchers promote and comment on new research results in news channels and events.
Where will the great discoveries be made?
One of the prerequisites for research quality is long-term funding without micro-management. That is what Uppsala University wants from the government for the upcoming research and innovation bill. Another condition, at our own control, is to maintain a specialised and competent research support unit that assists researchers at Medfarm with their applications for external grants.
Where are the great discoveries ahead? Of course, we don’t know that. A Nature article earlier this year shows a dramatic decline in disruptive science over the last 50 years. One reason may be that researchers are struggling to keep up with the vast amounts of published studies, and, therefore, are moving into ever narrower specialised areas. We need to embrace research outside our field as well. Why not attend a seminar on a different topic than your usual one? You never know what new ideas might strike you.
Karin Forsberg Nilsson, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine.
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