Happy First of May!

Spring is approaching with accelerating speed! Lots of things have been done with hard work, lots to be done to achieve the next milestones, and nice celebrations behind and upcoming (more about those later), and of course, one of those is traditional Labor Day (1st of May), even for scientists! Have a nice break, enjoy the delicacies and the light of spring!

Easter Break

Just before Easter Break, we made a nice occupational helthy event nearby the University, in Puijo Nature Reserve. The wheather was perfect and some one of us took it seriously and walked upon the the Puijo Hill via the stairs, of course! Some traditional games and of course, the fireplace lunch! 

This has been also the last days for our Erasmus students, first Mafalda and Madalena will head back home, followed by Maria and Simone. So thank you all, with your hard work and I'm sure there is a lot of new ideas how to continue with your projects!

100 publication out!

Yes, now it has been achieved, the 100th publication is out! Unfortunately, it was via a collaborative actions, but as valuable as any of them. We actually made a joke early last year that who of my PhD students will be the one to fill the number! The competition was hard, Adela had the 99th a month ago, and Andy and Janne have had their manuscript under evaluation for a while now. I also have 1 manuscript under revision myself and another one submitted, and to add up, a couple of collaborative papers also submitted/under revision. So after struggling for a while, it's gonna be a good year publication-wisely! 😀 

Anyway, I would like to thank Heidi Kidron and Alli Sinokki from the University of Helsinki for acknowledging my contribution in their publication dealing about OATP2B1 transporter variations (link to the publication; open access).

Assesing a PhD thesis in Copenhagen

I had  honor to serve as an assessor to Nana Svane's (University of Copenhagen) Ph.D. thesis last week. The assessor team consisted of 3 persons, one being the main or responsible assessor that would equal our custos, but this person cannot be the supervisor, as in our case the custos usually is. In addition, the assessor team consisted of 2 external evaluator (usually 1 national and 1 international), and we all 3 first pre-examined the thesis (in January), but also the difference to Finnish system was, that quite rarely the PhD candidate is asked to revise the thesis after this stage. Instead, he/she sees our comments and can prepare to them and response in his/her dissertation.

The public defence followed pretty much the same formula as with us, but the lectio precursoria lasted 45 min, while we have it only for ca. 15 min. All 3 assessors were also asking the questions, around 30 + min per each. The only thing that I wasn't prepared was that I was the main or first assessor. Luckily, I've got the information in the pre-dinner, one evening before! 😂 The pubic defence was also much more relaxed and not so formal as in Finland, so I really enjoyed. We had really nice and mature discussion with Nana, and all that I can say is that I'm very proud of the work that she has done and wish all the best for the future career! Also, congratulations to the scientific parents (=supervisors), Mie and Birger! 😀 After the defense, the only thing that differed again was the celebration, and not in a bad way, just different, but I enjoyed!