County governor takes researchers from University of Gävle on a tour

Once a year, the group leaves the castle in Gävle for a tour of the county. On March 19, the group will visit Vallviks bruk in Söderhamn and the theme for the evening is sustainable enterprising combined with a sustainable economy.

Per Bill

For County Governor Per Bill, who has taken the initiative to the tour, it is very important to bring researchers and entrepreneurs together. For this reason, every fourth meeting for the “The researchers at the castle” takes place in an alternative location in the county.

“I myself have a PhD in medicine and when I came to Länstyrelsen, the county administrative board, in Gävle, I was very pleased to see that the University, Länstyrelsen and Region Gävleborg had found such a good way to make the University’s research useful for the region.

In the parliament, Per Bill devoted time to giving research results the importance they should have in social debates, and, in the long run, to encourage more upper secondary pupils to choose technology and natural sciences.

The University’s core is sustainability

“Others tend to put sustainability on like make-up, but for the last twenty years, sustainability has been at the core of University of Gävle. We can see that many of the top researchers from the University is much sought-after by the media,” Per Bill says.

Lennart Eberleh

“We are very pleased that so many choose to visit us, and we are proud to be able to show them Vallvik which has been through a major transformation in recent years,” says Lennart Eberleh, CEO Rottneros.

To sustain businesses over time, he points out, we need to make them sustainable from ecological, economic and social perspectives.

- And Vallvik, which is more than a hundred years old, is a brilliant example of how it is possible.

The contact with the University is important to us

The forest industry and the basic industry are research-intensive, Lennart Eberleh continues. We need to show researchers that we are at the frontline and an interesting environment to visit when your time as a researcher is finished.

“To me this is good opportunity to exchange ideas with research environments at a university. The contact with the University is important for us because their programmes need to be of a high quality so that they can provide us with engineers in the future,” Lennart Eberleh concludes.