AAU's strategy: Knowledge for the world
AAU's strategy: Knowledge for the world
The world needs knowledge
Global dilemmas affect us all. More than ever before, the world's great challenges impact our daily lives.
Our longer lives and higher demands for quality of life are draining the earth's resources and creating challenges for our future welfare.
Digital quantum leaps are creating opportunities that no one dared imagine, and a future that no one can quite figure out.
These are far-reaching and urgent issues that no one can solve on their own. We all share the responsibility for making better decisions.
VKnowledge is the alpha and omega. The world needs universities that engage critically and constructively, and take responsibility for our shared future by transforming complex challenges into sustainable change.
We believe that knowledge can and must change the world.
Therefore, AAU is a university with ambitions that extend far beyond its walls, to the heart of the most pressing global and local trouble spots.
Therefore, our search for knowledge always begins and ends in partnership with society at large, with real problems in mind.
Therefore, we are the best at working with those entities dealing with these problems on a daily basis. Businesses, organisations and public sector authorities. Globally, nationally and regionally.
Therefore, we work across disciplines and faculties at all levels. That is why we take a foundational, interdisciplinary and transformative approach to knowledge.
A mission-oriented university
Our extensive expertise, intensive interdisciplinarity and proactive commitment to society give us unique opportunities to work on complex challenges. In conjunction with the world around us, we define and take part in missions that help solve those challenges. These missions must be the driving force behind our work. In short, AAU is a mission-oriented university.
Vision 2026
With its mission-oriented approach, Aalborg University will set a clear direction and create value through new knowledge about - and for - the world. Through high quality in our core activities, we will help create solutions to complex societal challenges regionally, nationally and globally.
We are internationally recognised as a mission-oriented university that contributes to sustainable development.
- We are internationally recognised for outstanding foundational, transformative and interdisciplinary research.
- We produce graduates with in-depth, discipline-specific knowledge and a focus on holistic thinking who can contribute to - and collaborate on - solving present-day and future challenges.
- We have developed our problem- and project-based learning model with a focus on digitalisation, entrepreneurship and the integration of SSH (social science and humanities) and STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics including IT).
- We are an attractive partner for private companies and public sector authorities and institutions, and our knowledge partnerships are mutual, focused and help to create change.
- Sustainability is a central theme of our activities.
AAU’s distinctive features
In everything we do, four characteristics define AAU.
Problem orientation
Our research and education are always based on real problems.
Collaboration
We are top-rated at working with companies, organisations and public sector authorities, and we are setting new standards for collaboration across faculties and areas of expertiser.
Commitment
Our staff and students are committed, to their own disciplinary expertise and to the problems of the wider world.
Change
Our knowledge and insights create value and innovation that improves the world.