Mission or Piece of Mind

I recently found myself reading or listening to a book that I would never pick up myself from any shelf; JHT - Mission or Piece of Mind. A famous Finnish (withdrawn already) rap artist's book. I don't listen to his music, never even liked it, but the e-book library suggested this to me, and once I read the introduction, I thought, why not. And I must admit that the book was very good, and why it resonated that much was that, despite his general appearance as a rap artist, he has really given much thought to many things. Most of the insights and realizations he made can be directly translated from his world to the scientific or academic world. The topics were simple, from making mistakes and accepting them; being ambitious, but humble and patient in order to achieve something; to balancing how much hard work is required to be successful, and how many of us are willing to pay that price. I think it is only in Finnish at the moment, but if you can understand, I can highly recommend it as summer holiday reading. 

Computational and Medicinal Chemistry by the Lake 2026

This week, we had Computational and Medicinal Chemistry by the Lake 2026 -conference here in Kuopio. Nice topics, although almost all of them were out of my expertise, but it is always good to understand what your collaborators are all about. 😎 I guess, for me, the most important thing was the networking, to see old friends and make new ones! And also our new students, like Joel got the opportunity to participate in the event almost next to your home door, and a bit older ones like Mikko, but also the "old ones" Ville and Andy, got the opportunity to present their posters. The other half of the group will attend another conference in Kuopio in 2 weeks! What a wonderful June!

 

Speeches and Speeches

Janne attended this week to the Annual meeting of European Federation for Pharmaceutical Sciences (EUFEPS) at the University of Naples in Italy, and he was actually selected one of the speakers, to tell his journey with LAT1. Janne was also earlier selected as a part of the EUFEPS Young Section Committee, whose main purpose is to provide support initiatives aimed at young EUFEPS members (in addition to the support for the main board). So good one, Janne!

We also had a little bit sad week, since 4 our staff members said goodbye and stepped into well-deserved retirement (from left to right, Technician Anne, Pharmaceutical Chemistry Lecturer Pekka, Toxicology Lecturer Risto, and Pharmacology Lecturer Anne). Risto wanted to give us the farewell seminar, telling the story of his career, which was indeed very inspiring. He also showed how science was presented back in the old days; unfortunately, the old projector lamp was not that sharp, but on the tble you may see how the posters were done, cutting and gluing the results to the very large paper. 😂