Iceland as an International Workplace in Science

Today, I participated in the workshop "Ísland sem alþjóðlegur vinnumarkaður vísindanna" ("Iceland as an international workplace in science") organized by Rannis, the Icelandic fund for research. At the workshop I delivered a presentation entitled How Do you Like Iceland? A View from a Foreign Academic. In case anybody is interested, the slides for my talk are available here. As you can see, I tried to give the Icelandic attendees a cathartic experience and some food for thought.

The latter part of this interesting workshop was attended by a few politicians. I am happy to report that all of them went on record as saying that the amount of funding available for science in Iceland should be increased substantially. Hopefully, these words will turn into deeds after the elections

This event also saw the signing of the European Charter of Researchers by the rectors of the Icelandic universities. Funnily enough, I had already been present at the signing of the same document by the rectors of the Italian universities in Camerino in July 2005. (Italy was the first country to sign the document.)