We will follow a quality-first strategy when growing the department to ideally 70 senior faculty members by 2030. The planned expansion should allow us both to consolidate existing groups and to cover a few gaps in our core research areas, when compared to world-leading universities, focusing on e.g. Machine Learning, AI, Systems and Networking, Computer Graphics, Quantum Computing, and Software Engineering. In figure 1 below, we depict our envisioned coverage of CS research disciplines by 2030. Existing and consolidated groups are shown with a blue outline, whereas new research groups emerging as related to existing groups are shown with an orange outline.
We expect to allocate around half of the new senior faculty recruited from now and until 2030 on consolidating existing groups, and the other half on growing the new research groups. People in existing groups may potentially transition and help create the new groups or even take the lead in establishing them.
We will gradually develop the research environment to foster new and perhaps smaller research groups supporting emerging areas of computer science with young talents utilizing the external funding opportunities to grow their own groups.
All academic staff should be encouraged to engage in collaborations, peer discussions and to provide feedback to colleagues. And to increase the number of guest researchers, visiting the department for both short- and longer-term stays. We will provide attractive conditions for both faculty and guests to engage in this.
The planned growth of the department will challenge the attention span of the Head of Department with respect to personnel management in the current flat organization structure. Thus the department needs to consider a new governance structure where personnel management may be delegated to a small number of Heads of Sections heads. This will move daily management closer to the everyday life in the groups and contribute to further coherence in closely related research activities. The overall strategic management will still be the scope of the department management and the Research Committee.
Our retention efforts begin already with the onboarding of new faculty members. A professional onboarding set-up, that is responsive and has as its goal to welcome, integrate and retain new staff has been designed. We will implement and continue to improve the set-up, particularly during the first part of the strategy period. A particular focus area will be to ensure externally funded starting grants e.g. from NOVO, Villum and AUFF up front as part of the onboarding process.
A special effort will be made to render career paths for particularly young researchers, women and internationally recruited staff more visible. Attractive career development schemes and local anchoring are key for retaining talented staff. The department will also continue its efforts to develop an inclusive workplace where all staff and students experience a strong "sense of belonging" and influence on strategy as well as daily life.
We also wish to increase focus on helping support the new faculty member’s partner in their job search and in participating in social life at the department with their partner.
With an increasing number of faculty members, we will focus on measures to improve our success rates for grant applications.
We will strengthen local supervision and mentoring of newly recruited staff in applying for funding in the Danish and the EU funding landscape, including attracting funding from private foundations. The shift towards more private foundation grants will be reflected in the department's revised fundraising strategy. As will the increased focus on the coverage of indirect costs. We will increase and improve the administrative support of these fundraising efforts.
Proposed activities:
