Bio

The children of this planet will face immense challenges in their lifetimes. They point to science if you ask your fellow man what we should do. They point to research, education, innovation, to technology. And that is what I am concerned with: the role of academia in making the future better and addressing our grand challenges. We must all try to do our part through the roles we have been given. For me, that has been in the senior management of higher education institutions for the last twelve years as a dean, a vice president (pro-rector), director of research, and chief development officer. I have participated in turning two universities of applied sciences into fully accredited universities and am now working on the third. I have also been responsible for acquiring and integrating two research institutes. I have established, cofounded (and in some cases initiated) the establishment of a research-based software company, a cyber security research center, a research center in digital engineering, a research center in housing markets, a competence center in work inclusion, two Ph.D. programs, Europe's largest network of scientists, technologists and research labs in Artificial Intelligence (AI), an organization organizing Norway's largest network of AI researchers, an association constituting the private side of a public-private partnership with the European Commission for AI, data and robotics, and an academic petition against autonomous weapons. I have strengths in strategy development, research strategy management, university leadership, and lifecycle value creation, including financing, board governance, partnership development, and public-private collaboration. I also have extensive international experience and hold a Ph.D. in Computer Science in the field of AI.