In conversation with ... Dr. Karin Markides, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST)

You were chair and then dean, and then all of a sudden you made another interesting move.

You went for two years, you were in the Swedish Innovation Agency.

And after that, you became president of Chalmers University.

Say something about the Swedish Innovation Agency and why is that important in your career?

Yes.

As I alluded to before, I learned a lot about entrepreneurship here in Utah.

And so when I came to Sweden, I was very interested in understanding why I didn't understand how it worked over there.

And so it was very difficult to really break through, to integrate my research with the innovation.

And so I searched in different ways to understand more.

And of course, because I was at Stanford also, I had good connections there.

And all this together made me think that maybe if I go two years to the innovation agency, I could really understand how they are thinking and how I could actually connect better to this and make a difference also in Sweden as I work.

So my intention was absolutely to go back to my chair position and really use what I learned on the national level.

But when I was there at Vinnova, Vinnova was connected all in the world.

So I made network there that I can appreciate today very much.

But I also was nominated for this position at Chalmers.

And I was not really thinking in that direction.

It took some time before because I love my research area and all that.

So it was a difficult, I must admit, it was a very difficult step.

But I think it had to be Chalmers to make that step because Chalmers is very different university and it had the opportunities that I felt that I could actually develop.

And maybe I could have an influence, a wider influence than I could in my research group.

Chalmers is one of the top science and engineering centric universities in the world.

And you say it's very different.

What makes it different? Can you expand on that a little bit?

Yes, it's surely a long story.

It's an old university on science and technology, but it actually is the only private and public university, I would say, in Sweden and in Scandinavia.