Aug 29, 2026

Harvesting

Good news from this week was that our SMVT-paper was finally accepted for publication! Hip Hurray! This was a long journey, I cannot even remember how many journal is behind... at least 3! But like I have said earlier it is not that the content is not good enough, the journals and their editors are drowning with the submitted manuscript and in that flow it's hard to make your point visible. Well, more about that, once it is out.

Since today is the last weekend of the official summer and the weather is getting colder, I decided to post what I have been harvesting from my garden, well the carrots are still in their garden bed. Also, the nature was generous to us this summer (and not everything is even showing below)! 😎

Aug 23, 2026

Busy start

The semester really had a crowded start, first introduction to the study field (pharmaceutical chemistry) for the 4th year pharmacy students (during my holiday... 😎), so that they can select to which field thay want to specialize, followed by Tiina's birthday celebration, and all these events, I was in so "holiday mood" that I forgot to take any photos... and this week we had FinPharmaNet symposium (link) in Kuopio, and the 20th celebration year! And what make it busy was that I was asked for a presentation just 1 week before (due to the cancellation), but since Hamed was already selected to present OATPs, I was left to build up a new story with Piezo1 agonists. 😅 But that was good, since now I have a clear picture of what Andy's second paper is going to look like! 😍 The next step is to transfer this to Andy's head! Anyway, good 2-day event, unfortunately, the new Director of Biocenter Finland (Katja Kivinen) et al. also wanted to visit Biocenter Kuopio at the same... so to sum up, a busy start! 

Aug 8, 2026

Back to School soon...

It is about time, when almost all of us have our summer holidays behind, and hopefully everyone has had a relaxing and enjoyable vacation. At least I had, and one of the greatest moments was Andy's wedding in Paris. It was again a good reminder of how science can also unite cultures, and it was really a privilege to be part of Congolese-French-Finnish wedding traditions. So thank you Andy, for inviting some of us and all the best in the future!

 

The trip to France also gave an opportunity to extend the holiday a bit, and see all the major attractions and thanks to Janne and Sohvi for their travelling company, we actually travelled all the major train lines to their final tops; North, South, West, and East! 😎 At the end, I also realized and I need to remember this for the upcoming semester; that not everything is as they seem to be. Unfortunately, we tend to judge things and people without better knowledge. For me, I thought that I knew what macarons are, and I must to admit that I have always wondered what all the fuss is about them, but having eaten ones in Paris, I realized that this was really the first time I had had macarons, all the dozens before that have been just cheap copies... 

Harvesting