Appointment of the new head of the Department of Computer Science expected to take place before the summer holiday
There were 15 applicants to the position of head of the Department of Computer Science.
However, most of the applicants were clearly unqualified, says acting department head Kurt Jensen, who also explains that the applicants judged qualified for the position will be invited to interviews in the coming weeks.
“We have a number of qualified applicants, and I anticipate that we will hire a new department head before the summer holiday,” says Jensen
Jensen has been acting head of the department since November last year. He is not among the applicants to the position.
New hires in connection with the digitisation initiative
The position of department head is not the only open position at the Department of Computer Science. In connection with AU’s strategic digitisation initiative, eighteen additional members of academic staff will be hired at the department over the next four years. This is a difficult task, according to Jensen, because the competition for the brightest minds in the IT industry is intense.
Jensen says that 113 applications to assistant professor and associate professor positions at the department have just been reviewed.
“We’ve offered positions to eight of the applicants. If we’re lucky, half of them will accept the offer,” Jensen says.
“More or less all of them also have offers from two or three of the absolute best universities, and there’ unfortunately only a 25-50 per cent chance that they’ll choose Aarhus.”
A call for applications to a professorship with a deadline in May attracted 37 applicants. Jensen expects that the position will be offered to one of these applicants before the summer holiday.