Applied Organic Chemsitry lectures has stated!

My heaviest teaching period has already started, 30 h of organic chemistry and how the knowledge can be applied in our modern society. I like to use activating elements in my lectures, as the talking itself is pretty boring to me too. 😂 This year I was able to spread the lectures a bit further apart from each other, so that the students would have more time to absorb the content of the lectures and practise the homework that helps them understand. But after the first period (10 h), I already see so many things to be improved for the next year...

This year we were also successful with 4th-year student recruitment; 17 out of 66 students selected Pharmaceutical Chemistry as their specialization field. And as a head, I'm more than happy and warmly welcome all of you to this fascinating branch of pharmacy that views things through chemical lenses. At the same time, this means a lot more study guidance for me... 😎 But it says something about the interests of young ones and their prospects for the future! 

What scientis won't do?

Well, any researcher should NOT travel from Kuopio to Turku and back (roughly 900 km in total) during one day, or put it more precisely, within 18 h. But we did that with Antti Poso, as we were invited to present our nodes (link) (Drug Design & Molecular Modelling for Antti and Medicinal Chemistry and Organic Chemistry by me) at the Biocenter Finland Drug Discovery & Chemical Biology Symposium 2026 yesterday (Thu 8.10.2026) in Turku. Nice event, great to see the folks, but I don't recommend it, especially at this time of year... So the schedule was the following:

05.00 am      Leaving home (by car)

06.15            Changing to Antti's car at Hankasalmi gas station

11.00            Arriving to Turku

11-16            Afternoon symposium & presentations (15 min each)

16.00             Leaving Turku (by car)

21.15             Changing from Antti's car and driving back home alone

22.30             Home-sweet-home 

One more LAT1-paper out!

We also recently got one more LAT1-paper out entitled "Molecular dynamics insights into structural and hydration dynamics of LAT1 bound to ligands and JPH203-induced inward-open arrest" (link). This was the last part of Käti's Ph.D. thesis, and was published in very precious Nature's Communications Chemistry. It was mainly beyond my expertise, and Käti has been working with this for ages, but I was very delighted to see how tightly the group work until the end, and special thanks go to Thales for finalizing it into such a great story! Congratulations to all! 👏