Academy of Finland on Michael’s Domain

Best poster award for Khushbu (annual GeneCellNano flagship meeting)

Fri, 22 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Last week, with a delay of 2.5 years, the GeneCellNano flagship partners finally met for the first time in real life. This meeting was overdue, and there were many very interesting talks among others from the Finnish Red Cross (about cancer immunotherapy) and UPM Biomedicals (about their biocompatible cellulose products). Lots of new ideas and some concrete plans for further collaboration. We participated with two posters, and - a bit unexpectedly since the project is still in its infancy - Khushbu Rauniyar from our lab won the best poster prize. Congratulations!

GeneCellNano Flagship

Wed, 18 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The GeneCellNano program was selected as an Academy of Finland Flagship. The idea behind the flagship is to make progress in the treatment of important diseases using advanced biologic technologies. Target diseases include ischemic heart disease, selected cancers, and retinopathy. The application was spearheaded by Seppo Ylä-Herttuala from the University of Eastern Finland and Seppo Vainio from the University of Oulu. In addition to groups from these two universities, the consortium features also groups from Aalto University (Olli Ikkala) and the University of Helsinki (groups Marjo Yliperttula, Timo Laaksonen, Hélder A. Santos, Tatu Lajunen, and my own).Link to the Academy of Finland press release: https://www.aka.fi/en/about-us/whats-new/press-releases/20202/academy-of-finland-selects-four-new-finnish-flagships/

ChemBio Finland

Thu, 28 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The biyearly ChemBio Finland event at the Helsinki Fair Center is taking place on this week’s Wednesday and Thursday. I presented our key project at the booth of the Academy of Finland ( http://www.aka.fi/fi/akatemia/media/Ajankohtaiset-uutiset/2019/tervetuloa-suomen-akatemian-osastolle-chembio-messuille/) . Many people showed up to listen to our work on how to move in-vitro antibody generation technologies into the 21st century using synthetic biology and Crispr.

Our key project featured

Wed, 25 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Our key project was featured in Tietyssti.fi . Katri Pajusola wrote the story and (at least from what I understand from the Finnish text) it seems to be a quite accurate description of what we try to do: http://www.aka.fi/fi/tietysti/luonto-ja-ymparisto/nyt-pinnalla1/tautien-hoitoon-laakitysta-ei-ainoastaan-diagnostiikkaa/

Difficult start

Wed, 26 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

UPDATE: I asked the Academy for the funding rates for the Academy Professor positions, but there are so few of these positions that you don’t get any usable statistics out of that data. I received a very transparent answer from the Academy (including the numbers I was asking for). The decision to preferentially cut funding from postdoctoral researchers was a conscious one by the Academy to preserve the means to do competitive research for projects and Academy Research Fellows. However, the trend to move funding from younger to older researchers seems to be general and has been going on already for half a century in the US (see e.g. here: http://metamodern.com/2009/11/27/great-science-great-scientists-and-icons/ or here: http://nexus.od.nih.gov/all/2012/02/13/age-distribution-of-nih-principal-investigators-and-medical-school-faculty/) . Our future depends on new ideas and innovations. I am not sure, whether it is true that younger investigators come up with more new ideas and innovations as claimed in the blog post above ( http://metamodern.com/2009/11/27/great-science-great-scientists-and-icons/) , but if that is the case, moving money away from them would a bad idea in the long run.Getting a research position funded by the Academy of Finland is becoming increasingly difficult. What worries me most is the fact that the savings are concentrated at the “lower” end of the academic career ladder: The success rate of applications for the postdoctoral researcher positions has been deteriorating most while Academy projects’ funding remained largely untouched in the Research Council for Health. This Tuesday, the Academy presented these numbers at the Ask & Apply event for this September’s funding call at the Medical Faculty. Academy Research Fellow funding was also stripped down, but much less than the postdoctoral researcher funding. Strangely enough, the slide omits the success rate of applications for Academy professor positions. Is this indicative of a generation conflict, where established researchers are successfully trying to secure the dwindling resources for themselves? I would need to know the application success rate for the Academy Professors and the granted amounts in order to draw any conclusions.

Being the boss

Fri, 01 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Almost accidentally, I got promoted. I am now a principal investigator or group leader. I never have been especially keen on being the boss. There are enough cushy and mediocre PIs in this world and my (now former) boss Kari Alitalo with his level of devotion and excellence is a shadow probably impossible to step out of.Nevertheless, before I was too old to apply for a group leader position from the Academy of Finland , I decided in 2011 to give it a try. I might regret if I never even tried. The first attempt failed. One year later, my PhD was 9+ years old and I had to pledge special reasons to be able to compete again (I had taken long childcare time-outs for both of our children). Although I essentially submitted the same application I got lucky this time in what has been described by someone as the “Academy Lottery”.And my worst expectations became reality: Instead of doing research I mutated into a money acquisition machine. That is partly due to the Academy giving substantially less funding than I applied for. Every year the Academy has less and less money to distribute and faces the tough decision to fund fewer researchers or to fund the same number of researchers, but give everybody less… I once had an email conversation with Alexander Stubb (when he was still approachable for ordinary people like me) about the declining budget for research, but at least the present Finnish government seems to underestimate the long term effects of the continuously deteriorating financial situation of academic research in Finland. The situation is so bad, that most talented people are leaving this country at the first opportunity.Due to the full cost model , I am practically forced to stick to the budget when it comes to the labour cost. And that’s why there’s no money left to pay for the day-to-day expenses like chemicals and reagents. Until one of my grant applications is successful, we’ll have to do research on a shoestring budget…BTW: My lab’s new web pages hosted by the university’s servers are still not up. But since they’re ready, I put them up on my own server .