An international committee, assigned with mid-term evaluation of Centres of Excellence, gave CAGE an exceptional score in a recent report. “CAGE has done exceptionally well”, the report from the committee states. “well above what may have been reasonably expected.”
Text: Maja Sojtaric
The report highlights that major, innovative technological developments have been made, partly in collaboration with others, both industry and academia, national and international. And that the scientific outcome in published papers is impressive with many publications in high ranking journals such as Nature and Science.
Read the report: Midterm Evaluation of Thirteen Centres of Excellence (SFF III)
“We are of course happy with the results of the evaluation,” says professor Jürgen Mienert who until recently was the director of CAGE. “It means that we will continue to receive funding for the next five years, which gives us the opportunity to keep going with our excellent research.”
There are many factors that together make CAGE achieve distinctive scientific results at such a high international level. But the excellent scientific team is at the centre of it.
“Our scientists can be very proud and I am very thankful to all of them for their efforts. My sincere thanks go to the early career scientists, postdocs, guest, and associate scientists, PhDs and their team leaders for doing such a superb and demanding interdisciplinary research.” said Mienert who is currently a visiting researcher at MBARI in USA.
Celebrating the results, looking to the future
CAGE employees, leadership at the host institution UiT The Arctic University of Norway, and other contributors gathered today to celebrate the good results.
“I wish I had the chance to thank Jürgen Mienert in person at this moment.” said the new director professor Karin Andreassen who took the reins in August. “for his visionary leadership and for setting the standard for us.”
“ CAGE as a centre is funded for five more years, but we aim for a life beyond that with ambitions for large projects and infrastructure development. We count on our employees to stay motivated and to contribute to the longevity of our research.”
The sentiment was mirrored by the rector of UiT Anne Husebekk who commended CAGE for building a strong scientific community.
“CAGE became one of the major contributors to Arctic science at UiT, going from four to some 60 employees in a very short amount of time. We are well aware of the work done at CAGE and I have personally learnt a lot about the effects of methane on climate change following CAGE through its initial phase. UiT is looking forward to support CAGE also in the future.” said Husebekk.
