Name, title and department:

Petar Popovski, Professor, Department of Electronic Systems

Why are you running for the board?

I would like to bring more research-oriented perspectives to the board. There needs to be a proper framework to facilitate nurturing of the ideas of individual researchers or research groups and bring them to a larger scale, both in terms of research centers and educational programs.

In your opinion, what is the biggest challenge of AAU?

I think that the biggest future challenge for AAU is the expected volatility of funding, which will affect the stability and development within the research and teaching environment at AAU. At a national level, there comes a redefinition of the master education concept. At a regional level, we see that the demographic factors lead to falling student numbers for many educations in Nordjylland.

And what is the solution?

I believe that the way forward is to decouple the funding from these trends. In terms of research, AAU should negotiate framework funding with the large funds that will support bottom-up research activities. In terms of education, AAU should consider the whole world to be a potential classroom and offer online master degrees. Some of the highest-ranked universities in the world do it already for a long time. AAU should use the high international ranking to position itself on the international market for online master degrees.

Why should one vote for you in the board election?

I believe I can be the right advocate for the ideas mentioned above. Especially in terms of research, I have experience from various panels, such as ERC, DFF, or Swedish research council, as well as a large international network. During the last 12 years I have attracted external funding, such as ERC and Villum Investigator, to build organically a research group, which started with 2 persons only and now has more than 25 members. With this background, I can stand, in a credible way, for the support of bottom-up research that will mobilize the talents at AAU.

What are the key issues you will focus on?

1. Work towards finding principled ways to stabilize the research funding and focus AAU towards growing research leaders that will nurture bottom-up research efforts.
2. Utilize the high international ranking of AAU to treat the world as a potential classroom and offer innovative online courses and master degrees, creating teaching incomes that will make AAU thrive after the reform of the master educations in Denmark.
3. Revive the academic-industrial collaboration by making AAU attractive for a cluster of companies, similar to the 2000s when Aalborg was a worldwide center of mobile communications.