Half-virtual Public Ph.D. Thesis Defence

Yesterday, I attended for the first time for a Ph.D. thesis public defense, in which the opponent was online. It was still allowed to have the Ph.D. student and custos in the lecture room and also a limited number of audience (less than 50), but we all needed to wear the face-masks, even though the places in which we sat, were like 5 meters away from each other. But I must say that everything went very smoothly and the student, Prasanthi, well-defended her Ph.D. thesis and we had a lovely "Karonkka"-dinner party afterward! So congratulations Prasanthi and Thank you one more time! 

 

This week has been a socially very active week, since we had also our Faculty's "Pre-Christmas party" or it was more like activity afternoon, on Wednesday. We were lucky, the weather was perfect and sunny for outdoor sports. Our task was to pick approximately 13 orienteering controls around Kuopio Väinölänniemi and Rönö, and then answer to the tricky questions. So basically we walked for 1.5 h and according to my activity bracelet, we took more than 8000 steps. On that day I probably did my greatest score ever, over 20 000 steps! Anyway, after the orienteering, we had a late lunch outside and I think I saw smiles on everyone's faces. It was a really nice social event with all COVID-19 precautions taken into account!