Summer Holidays are approaching

It has been quiet in this blog already, mainly due to that last week's mid-summer holiday. Many of us also start our summer holidays from there. I have been working, like almost our whole group at least until the end of the next week. I have mentioned this earlier also, but this is the best time of the year to clean up your desk and brainstorm the upcoming semester. I will also have a new class starting next autumn, Organic Chemistry (well old course, but new in my teaching schedule). So I have to update the content and we also decided to translate it in English at this point, so we can easily adapt it with international students. So a lot of work!

We still have had Amandine, Lucie and Julie working hard in the labs, but soon their internships are also ending. Even though it was short time from early May, and I have been extremely busy during that time, it has been a great pleasure to work with you! So cheers and enjoy your well-earned summer! 😎 Let's get back to the business in August. There will be a lot happening as the semester starts...

17th Annual FinPharmaNet Meeting in Kuopio

As mentioned in the last post, this week our Doctoral Programme in Drug Research (DPDR) and the School of Pharmacy organized the 17th Annual FinPharmaNet Meeting in Scandic Kuopio on 12-13.6.2023. It was a great success, over 140 participants, great talks and wonderful interactions and discussion. We also had a nice boat or ferry cruise after the first day. And by the way, I was very proud of you all (Ph.D. students) who had a 3-minutes presentation, you did a great job! 😎

FIBTRA Meeting in August - Time to register!

As mentioned earlier during this year, we will organize another event, 6th Finnish Brain Tumor Research Association (FIBTRA) Annual Meeting in Kuopio Scandic, from 31st of August to 1st of September, 2023. It will be organized together with UEF Doctoral Programme in Drug Research (DPDR) with a focus on "Brain Tumor Microenvironment and Novel Drug Treatments to Treat Brain Tumors". We have invited several wonderful keynote speakers, from the USA, Sweden, Estonia, Germany and of course from Finland! Here is a sneakpeak to the symposium booklet and the program. More information can be found behind this link (https://sites.uef.fi/fibtra2023-symposium/). The early-bird registration is open until 31.6.2023, but the deadline for the abstracts is already next Friday (16.6.2023). I wish you welcome and hope seeing you in Kuopio in August!

Before that we will have a nice practise next week, when we are having a 17th Annual FinPharmaNet meeting in the same place, Scandic Kuopio, in 12-13.6.2023. Looking forward to the next week! 😎

Spring semester is over

Yes, it is June! And the semester is pretty much over. This year we had our synthesis class in May (instead of March) and Santosh took care of the teaching in the lab and I only coordinated the course and listened the great presentation of the project works that the students prepared for us. I guess it was a success, since at least one student was interested in doing partly modelling and partly synthesis M.Sc. thesis next year. So we look forward to see you Mikko in autumn! And perhaps, if everything goes well, Simone, who participated only to the synthesis class, can also join us for a second ERASMUS training, but to our group this time.

It's always a bit sad, since all our ERASMUS students are also leaving and suddenly it is so empty and silent in the lab. So at this point, I would also like to thank Pablo, Giorgio, Lukazs, Huihui and Nolan for your great contribution to our group. And also Sema, our postdoc, that we couldn't keep any longer in our research group due to the tricky funding situation. Hopefully the compounds you made and the results you produced will be published soon! I hope all the best for you all for the future! And yes, it was great to have a one more farewell bowling competition! 

Luckily, Amandine, Lucie, and Julie are continuing their interships over the upcoming summer semester, so we feel a bit more fresh and younger. 😎 One thing that I will miss though, is Karin, our DrugTech coordinator, who sadly left us!  But I hope our roads will cross somewhere at some point!