You will be dean of a merger faculty and tumble into a recently thought-out nd heavily fought-over administrative model. Aren't you starting a really rotten job?
'I am happy that everything has calmed down somewhat after the reorganisation troubles. But these kinds of problems are everywhere; in Amsterdam as well as in Delft. There is a clear trend to combine the technical sciences, for financial reasons but also because there is a certain logic to it. Chemical Technology and Applied Physics are growing towards one another and that makes the step to one faculty easier.
'About the new administrative model: that deans and scientific directors have an equal position at the UT makes it different from other universities, where the dean is boss. I do think that this is a workable model. I consider it an experiment and will see how it works later.'
What is the fun of managing a lot of extremely headstrong people?
'My career has been showing a shift from research to management in the past few years. 160 people work at the two institutes I am managing at the moment, and there the management duties cost a lot time and energy. Of course professors in particular know their own minds really well, but that is one of the selection criteria. Scientists without their own opinion will not get very far. You'd better accept headstrong people as they are. My main task is to look where we should go collectively.'
Where will the faculty S&T be in five years' time?
'That is hard to say at this moment. But the educational programme technical medicine will be in place, complete with collaboration with the hospitals involved. It was a beautiful strategic move to net this programme. In addition to that, of course, we have to continue doing the things we are good at and making sure that we are working in fields where the traditional technical sciences and medical sciences and biology meet, like, for example, bio-informatics and genomics. It would really be a strategic error if we do not put our money on this, because scientifically a lot is happening in these fields.
'And I would like to see the number of girl-students get a significant boost. We really need to work on that. The science talent available there we urgently need to increase the number of engineers, and, moreover, the number of female professors is still at the level of a developing country. Our profession will die out if we cannot make it more interesting to more people.'
