Hallym University Chuncheon Sacred Heart Hospital

The Korea Economic Daily held an interview with Dr. Anders Hallberg at the Lotte Hotel on October 8, 2008. He has been serving as president of Uppsala University in Sweden since July 1, 2007.

"Swedish students have a strong tendency to avoid majoring in natural sciences and engineering. There is a firm social consensus among the Swedish people that such fields must attract talented students. However, without having brilliant plans to lead those students who dislike studying math and science to scientific fields, television debates by experts from various sectors have been held on every weekend to address these issues. As all the people of Sweden consider research and development as a key social infrastructure, they seriously deal with them."

President Hallberg interviewed by the Korea Economic Daily on October 8, 2008, noted, "National competitiveness highly depends on the competence of universities in research and development. The Swedish government and universities are working on various incentives to secure more talented students who will be its future engines." The purpose of his visit is to participate in the '1st Hallym-Uppsala International Symposium' which is the first collaborative academic project between Uppsala University and Hallym University.

Uppsala University, established in 1477, is one of the world-class universities in Scandinavia along with Lund University of Sweden. Currently over 30,000 undergraduate and 2,400 graduate students enroll for the class, and Uppsala ranks the 70th among world universities in the evaluation of research ability. It is associated with 15 Nobel laureates, and has a good reputation in the field of information technology, energy and life sciences, pharmacy and medicine. Moreover, over the last 10 years, Uppsala has incubated more than 100 venture businesses including Skype, a world-renowned internet telecom company, and has joined hands with the world's leading pharmacy company, AstraZeneca, to invent new drugs contributing greatly to advancing the Swedish economy.

"We cannot help being hard on evaluating the competitiveness of sectoral research abilities as of Uppsala's annual total budget of about 540 million euros (950 billion won), two thirds is being financed by the government, while the rest of the budget is funded by the generosity of its alumni and conglomerates such as Skype. The Swedish government injects research funds into leading institutions and evaluates them on the number of registered Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), abilities to secure funds from outside organizations, the number of quotes from the papers and creativity. The media makes in-depth reports on such government support," he explained. He also added that national competiveness of Sweden has remained far higher than other countries through this social system. In this regard, Uppsala has recently been evaluated by 175 experts of the Swedish National Agency for Higher Education on the strengths and weaknesses of Uppsala University for a week.

"Uppsala's competitiveness comes from promoting innovative research by investing 60 percent of its total budget to graduate students. Focusing on core competence and drastically giving up areas with low competitiveness is also an essential strategy to maintain competiveness," president Hallberg stressed.

"Through collaborative research on neurodegenerative diseases, diabetes and heart diseases, we would analyze their causes and treatments between the people in the East and West. Hallym and Uppsala will together create a big synergy as Hallym's drive for globalization is so great," he also noted.

By Seung-Kyu Oh, Int'l Operations Team, HUMC