Merry christmas and happy new year!
We want to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
For us, collaboration and dialogues are important, among other things to capture needs and challenges that can form the basis for the development of research and the center's operation. Our annual conference in January is a good example of such an activity where important ideas and input are allowed to flow and take new directions. During the year, we also had the opportunity to teach the EU's plant protection managers more about Swedish forest damage and at the same time take the opportunity to talk about the challenges that exist. In October, we held an internal symposium together with the SLU Plant Protection Network to find common paths and collaborations for research.
Research has a particularly important place in our operations as a university and many projects started during our first time. In 2023, an additional seven projects received funding to generate knowledge and seek answers to questions about forest damage. At our research school, the PhD students not only completed the first forest damage course but also gathered and networked with the sector at the research school's annual meeting in November.
We are also incredibly pleased to have a full-time communicator in the organization since this August, enabling a greater focus on
the promotion of the center and research communication. Another investment we made in 2023 was to start the development of the tool 'Skogsskada' in order to better respond to users' needs.
As we approach the end of the year, we now set our sights on 2024.
Sincerely, Jonas Rönnberg, director of SLU Skogsskadecentrum
