Support staff
"The support staff at the Department of Public Health assists the scientific staff with (HR) administration, IT, housing and project management."
2021 was the year our department said goodbye to long term ICT colleague Kees Noordsij, and welcomed new colleague Vahdi Sacli (read more about him and his work below). Among other things, our ICT colleagues engaged in the recently launched Cyber Resilience project, an Erasmus MC wide workgroup focussing on information security and safe work spaces.
For the secretariat, 2021 marked the introduction of a revised onboarding procedure. Our aim was to make new colleagues feel more welcome (even when a large amount of the work week is spent at the home office) and provide them and their supervisor with the right information at the right time. In general, the secretariat has been providing more support for projects, e.g., recruitment of and contact with study participants, besides that, the secretariat has been increasingly involved in the optimalisation of work processes at both the department and at theme level.
The research support office has been managing several multi-partner projects (read more about this below) and continuously contributes to the department’s knowledge and implementation of laws and regulations concerning health research. The research support office now represents our department in Coreon to discuss best practices of careful and responsible health research. Besides, they worked with many researchers and students in setting up their questionnaires in Lime Survey.
Highlights
International cooperation at the Department of Public Health
Various sections in the department are involved in EU funded projects. The department has an excellent track record, and is actively involved in writing research proposals and co-writing in proposals of international partners. In 2021, four EU projects were granted with a total amount of € 13 million. The Research Support Office has an extensive range of tasks in supporting these international projects.
ValueCare
Healthy ageing along with independent living have become key challenges for Europe as countries are experiencing growth in the number of older persons. The ValueCare project has a consortium of 17 partners from 8 EU countries, with scientific, technological, clinical and social competencies. Integrated value-based care will be supported by a digital solution that will be tested and evaluated in 7 large-scale pilots.
In this project the RSO is responsible for preparing the grant agreement, organizing meetings, financial and technical reporting and submitting amendments. The RSO also supports the researchers in adherence to the GDPR and Code of Good Conduct and advices about data protection, informed consent procedures and data management plans.
Introducing IT manager Vahdi Sacli
My name is Vahdi Sacli and I have been appointed to the Departments Public Health and General Practice from December 1, 2021. I have been working at Erasmus MC for more than 11 years. In practice I interfere with everything that has an IT component. Meeting rooms equipment that are not working properly, an application that must be made available for the entire department, data security issues and systems renewals are issues that I regularly deal with. Besides that, I support the management of the department in strategic choices, identify IT problems and propose solutions for them, and take care of the roll-out of projects of the Central IT department.
