Not all emails will be restored

EUTOPIA fully funds new postdoctoral positions

foreign researchers. But the lion’s share of the work is done in the departments.

Anyone who wants to increase their chances of getting a postdoctoral position can apply for both EUTOPIA-SIF and individual MSCA (MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships), Maria Enge explains. – Both forms of funding involve promoting mobility across different borders and are a significant step in a young researcher’s career.

Antonios Drakopoulos is currently working at the University of Würzburg. He hopes that his time at the University of Gothenburg will lead to fruitful research collaborations, a lot of networking and good opportunities to develop in terms of research. – I look forward to having access to state-of-the-art facilities, further educational training and joint ventures within the EUTOPIA-SIF programme. In addition, of course, I hope to make new friends in Sweden, a country that is truly outstanding, not only in research, but also in terms of working and living conditions, public health and social security systems.

Eva Lundgren

FACTS

The EUTOPIA Science and Innovation Fellowship Program (EUTOPIA-SIF) funds 76 two-year postdoctoral positions over four years, of which the University of Gothenburg contributes to 5. The first of four advertisements has closed, the second will open this autumn. The advertisement is funded by the EU Horizon 2020 programme, which contributes 5.6 million euro, and by the participating universities, which contribute 4.6 million euros. The advertisements are part of the EU MSCA (Marie Skłodowska Curie Actions) initiative. In addition to this so-called MSCA COFUND, there are also individual MSCA, as well as grants for staff exchanges and for networks in education. The MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship has a preliminary deadline in October. Feel free to contact Maria Enge at FIK for a writing guide, administrative help and individual feedback on your application. The EUTOPIA network includes the University of Gothenburg, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, CY Cergy Paris Université, University of Ljubljana, Pompeu Fabra University and the University of Warwick.

Not all email restored

Three quarters of the more than 5,000 employees who were affected by the email crash have got back all or part of their email history. The remaining employees, whose data was on the damaged servers, will not get it back.

IT WAS THE INTERNATIONAL

IT specialist company IBAS that, for several months, tried to save the data on the damaged servers.

– We hired a world-leading company in the field and they have done everything that was technically possible to retrieve the maximum amount of data. Now we have received the final delivery and cannot do any more, says section manager Zeljko Ergic at the IT unit.

The quality of the data has varied. Many employees have got back their entire email history, others some, and a smaller proportion nothing at all. After the company delivered the data, a special group at the IT unit went through everything to ensure that the right information went to the right person. The email history has then been loaded into each employee’s mailbox. Those who have not received any email history were notified by email at the end of April.

ACCORDING TO Zeljko Ergic, there have been surprisingly few reactions since then. – Of course there are people who are disappointed. Among other things, one researcher has asked questions about financial compensation for lost international contacts, but he is not entitled to that, according to our lawyers. Some people have not felt it necessary to get their email history back. My assessment is that we have had good dialogue with the users and that most people understand that we have done everything we could in an extraordinary situation

At the same time, intensive work has been underway to try to recover the email history that was saved on each hard drive. The IT unit has called each user to try to solve the problems. It often involves about a year’s history on PCs, on Macs usually much more. Zeljko Ergic has no information about how much money the email crash has cost in the form of overtime and costs for recreating email histories.

– OUR WORK HAS been focused on rectifying the situation. Money was not a limiting factor, but the technical possibilities were, and ultimately they have been exhausted.

During the email crash, questions were raised about how secure the University of Gothenburg’s IT environment was. An investigation carried out by the internal audit showed that the security requirements that had been set were sufficient. Now that the entire University of Gothenburg has switched to Microsoft’s cloud service, there are no further risks. – There is no safer solution than the one we have today, but if something unexpected were to happen with the Microsoft solution, we have an extra backup locally. Then we have a quick way to restore data.

Zeljko Ergic feels he can breathe a sigh of relief – It feels good that it’s over. We can conclude the final chapter of the email crash. We have done everything possible, and we can now move on and put our drive and energy into everything else that the business needs.