Through partnerships with the outside world, we strive to contribute to missions where we have strong research insight. We strive to play an active role in finding solutions to current – and future – global challenges and make a difference to the world around us.

Create knowledge for the world together in missions with others

At Aalborg University, we want to contribute to missions along with others – researchers, business people, interest organisations, international partners and governing bodies – to find the best solutions and create knowledge for the world. In addition to individual efforts, we aim to work in unison across areas of expertise and in cooperation with selected partners with a clear focus on the mission's goals. We consider our interdisciplinary approach that is based on strong foundational and transformative research expertise to be a quality in our work on missions.

Distictive features

Our distinctive features – problem orientation, collaboration, commitment and change – are prerequisites for our success as a mission-oriented university. Our distinctive features are instrumental in AAU being internationally recognised as a mission-oriented university that contributes to sustainable development. 

Profile

The university's profile must be experienced as relevant by the wider world, our staff and students, because we are helping to create changes and solutions to regional, national and global challenges.

The illustration provides an operational overview of the elements of the mission orientation and can serve as a methodical guide.

[GOAL] The goal is therefore to solve the major global societal problems with concrete actions – and to do so by organising in cross-cutting partnerships where we bring together actors across state, business, foundations, universities and civil society [ORGANISATIONAL FORM] with a clear intention to both involve and co-create [WORK METHOD]. The missions are driven by these partnerships which are a different way of developing and implementing research than universities are used to. However, we at AAU have extensive experience with interdisciplinary research and the utilisation of our research, which helps to provide AAU with favourable conditions for working in a mission-oriented manner in relation to our research.

As a mission-oriented university, we are interested in topics with significant social relevance, but missions must not be confused with 'grand challenges'. Rather, they are to be understood as grand challenges that are broken down into smaller and well-defined programmes. The missions are worked on within a defined thematic framework [THEMATIC FRAME], which gives researchers, businesses and decision-makers a clear focus and enables them to orient themselves towards clear goals [ORIENTATION]. At AAU, we have selected four themes for our approach to mission-oriented research, and we will continue to work on them in 2022.

The mission-oriented approach is to blend and unite across disciplines [APPROACH] – and it is therefore clearly in line with the interdisciplinary mindset. The missions must be solved with competences from both STEM and SSH. The missions require several disciplines and societal actors to work together and "blend" knowledge.

Last but not least, the mission-driven university engages in research initiatives from start to finish – from idea to solution [SCOPE] – and ensures concrete output in the form of solutions, innovations and knowledge sharing [OUTPUT].