UCMR - a “jewel in the crown” of the Linnaeus Centres of Excellence in Sweden
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The evaluation panel placed UCMR at the top in all categories
[2020-03-05] “Yes, do it again!”, was the short answer of Jürgen Mlynek, professor at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, on the question if the Linnaeus Programme has been successful. The evaluation of the 40 Centres of Excellence (CoE) within the Linnaeus Programme was presented and discussed at the Swedish Centre of Excellence Investments Conference last Wednesday in Stockholm. The programme was set up by Swedish Research Council (VR) and the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (FORMAS) after a governmental decision in 2005 and provided 10-years funding to each CoE.
The international Expert Panel, chaired by Jürgen Mlynek, and co-chaired by Marja Makarow, professor and director at the Biocenter in Helsinki, Finland, focused on three areas: Research performance, societal relevance and international competitiveness. UCMR was in all three areas ranked as one of the top three centres, as highlighted by Mlynek and Makarow during the conference.
“Build on what was already strong”
In its report, the reviewers especially mentioned the strategy of the UCMR leadership, namely the “distinguished first Director of UCMR”, professor Bernt Eric Uhlin, who had the aim “to build on what was already strong and then hire the best people”. UCMR was early out to develop model systems to identify new control strategies to combat antimicrobial resistance. The evaluation panel was so impressed by the centre’s research performance that it judged it as “one of the jewels in the crown” of the Linnaeus Centres.
“We are indeed very pleased with the panel´s rating of UCMR as a Centre of Excellence with top qualities. This gives us strong encouragement for the continued development of a vivid and strong research environment among UCMR researchers”, commented Bernt Eric Uhlin
The panel also was asked to identify the top three universities that can serve as good examples for both hosting CoE´s but also for using the investment to further their international competitiveness. Here, Umeå University was ranked among the top three universities, based on criteria which addressed organization, management, knowledge transfer, collaboration and communication, and added value of the CoE.
Umeå Centre for Microbial Research (UCMR) was awarded a Linnaeus Grant of 90 million SEK for the period of 2008-2018 from the Swedish Research Council. Initially, a consortium of 16 UCMR principle investigators stood behind an application that was strongly endorsed by the university’s vice-chancellor at that time, Göran Sandberg. UCMR was formed 2004-2005 as a bottom-up initiative with the vision to establish a world-leading and sustainable science environment promoting cutting-edge biomedical research in molecular infection medicine at Umeå University. It included a multi-disciplinary group of research faculty from both the faculty of medicine and the faculty for science and technology. A large number of additional researchers became affiliated to UCMR over the years and by 2019 the UCMR network consisted of more than 80 principle investigators and their research groups.
The UCMR research environment was the basis for establishment of MIMS
Thanks to the UCMR, many excellent scientists were internationally recruited to different departments with life science research in Umeå. And the establishment of The Laboratory for Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden (MIMS) was entirely based on UCMR and its aim towards a world-leading and sustainable science environment in molecular infection medicine. At the onset of MIMS was also the successful recruitment of Emmanuelle Charpentier who did her seminal work on the gene editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 during her time at MIMS and UCMR.
Read more: UCMR - a “jewel in the crown” of the Linnaeus Centres of Excellence in Sweden
[2019-10-25] Congratulations to six UCMR/MIMS PIs, who will receive funding from the Swedish Research Council!
[2019-06-24] It was a big surprise for both Bernt Eric Uhlin, founding director of MIMS, and the audience attending the “10 years of MIMS symposium”, when Emmanuelle Charpentier – one of the first group leaders who started a lab at MIMS - entered the podium and gave a speech to honor Bernt Eric and MIMS.
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