Teaching on Michael’s Domain

Courses I teach

Fri, 26 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

IN RED - as (one of the) responsible teacher(s); * - as course developer

Current wet lab teaching
*DPDR-305 (1 ECTS) Purification of Recombinant Proteins and Protein Drugs by FPLC Introduction Methods Protein tags PROV-004 (5 ECTS) Introduction to cell and molecular biology methods Alternative assignment: Expression, purification and functional testing of Phusion polymerase Practical: PCR Work PROV-410* (4 ECTS)** Recombinant DNA technology in therapeutic protein engineering - laboratory work

Current wet lab teaching

DPDR-305* (1 ECTS) Purification of Recombinant Proteins and Protein Drugs by FPLC
PROV-004 (5 ECTS) Introduction to cell and molecular biology methods
- Alternative assignment: Expression, purification and functional testing of Phusion polymerase
- Practical: PCR Work
PROV-410* (4 ECTS) Recombinant DNA technology in therapeutic protein engineering - laboratory work

Current courses
FARM-310 (5 ECTS) Biopharmaceuticals, basic course Luento #3: Terapeuttiset proteiinit I: Insuliinit ja insuliinianalogit Lecture #3: Therapeutic proteins I: Insulin ja insulin analogs Luento #4: Terapeuttiset proteiinit II: Erytropoietiini, interferonit, & G-CSF Lecture #4: Therapeutic proteins II: Erythropoietin, interferons, & G-CSF Luennot #5+#6: Terapeuttiset proteiinit III: Vasta-aineet ja fuusioproteiinit Lectures #5+#6: Therapeutic proteins III: Antibodies and fusion proteins PROV-004 (5 ECTS) Introduction to cell and molecular biology methods Lecture #1: Alternative Assignment: Protein Production & Purification Lecture #2: Protein Purification Methods Lecture #3: Protein Purification Tags Lecture #4: PCR lecture *PROV-409 (1 ECTS) Recombinant DNA technology in therapeutic protein engineering - lecture & exercise course Session #1: Introduction to Recombinant DNA Technology: Restriction Enzymes, PCR, Plasmids, Transformation Session #2: Multifragment assembly (“Gibson” and similar), Golden Gate, mutagenesis methods, CRISPR/Cas systems Session #3: Databases, sequences, software, bioinformatics for your cloning Session #4: Vectors and systems for protein expression Session #5: How to make transgenic organisms and recombinant viruses PROV-216 (5 ECTS) Molecular Pharmacology VEGFs and VEGF receptors PROV-204 (5 ECTS) Biological Drugs II Antibodies, antibody fusions and antibody conjugates as drugs TMED-929* (1-2 ECTS) Drug discovery & development with a focus on biologics Introductory lecture Protein drugs group work kick-off Vaccines, vaccine development & biological warfare: The smallpox vaccine Challenges in formulation, production and quality control Evidence-based medicine, science-based medicine, and complementary and alternative medicine PROV-303 (5 ECTS) Advanced Biopharmaceutics Session #6: Biological barriers: The blood brain barrier Session #8: Recombinant DNA Technology (aka “cloning”) is the starting point for nearly every biological drug …and much more Session #9: Transgenic animals: For drug production, generating human antibodies and making animal models of human diseases Session #10: Protein Drugs: Engineering and Case Studies GMB-401 (5-10 ECTS) Integrative health biosciences Clinical Trials MPHARM-002A/PROV-105A (11 ECTS) Drug development and preclinical evaluation Discovery, Development and Optimization of Protein Drugs MPHARM-002B/PROV-105B (11 ECTS) Pharmaceutical product development and rational use of medicines Biophamaceuticals - Challenges in formulation, production and quality control MPHARM-009 (5 ECTS) Introduction to research methods in drug discovery and development – theory Plans for the future… Protein production and purification Stable cell line generation FARM-314 (5 ECTS)** Medicinal preparations I Basic Issues in the Formulation of Biophamaceuticals

Current courses

FARM-310 (5 ECTS) Biopharmaceuticals, basic course
- Luento #3: Terapeuttiset proteiinit I: Insuliinit ja insuliinianalogit Lecture #3: Therapeutic proteins I: Insulin ja insulin analogs
- Luento #4: Terapeuttiset proteiinit II: Erytropoietiini, interferonit, & G-CSF Lecture #4: Therapeutic proteins II: Erythropoietin, interferons, & G-CSF
- Luennot #5+#6: Terapeuttiset proteiinit III: Vasta-aineet ja fuusioproteiinit Lectures #5+#6: Therapeutic proteins III: Antibodies and fusion proteins
PROV-004 (5 ECTS) Introduction to cell and molecular biology methods
- Lecture #1: Alternative Assignment: Protein Production & Purification
- Lecture #2: Protein Purification Methods
- Lecture #3: Protein Purification Tags
- Lecture #4: PCR lecture
PROV-409* (1 ECTS) Recombinant DNA technology in therapeutic protein engineering - lecture & exercise course
- Session #1: Introduction to Recombinant DNA Technology: Restriction Enzymes, PCR, Plasmids, Transformation
- Session #2: Multifragment assembly (“Gibson” and similar), Golden Gate, mutagenesis methods, CRISPR/Cas systems
- Session #3: Databases, sequences, software, bioinformatics for your cloning
- Session #4: Vectors and systems for protein expression
- Session #5: How to make transgenic organisms and recombinant viruses
PROV-216 (5 ECTS) Molecular Pharmacology
- VEGFs and VEGF receptors
PROV-204 (5 ECTS) Biological Drugs II
- Antibodies, antibody fusions and antibody conjugates as drugs
TMED-929* (1-2 ECTS) Drug discovery & development with a focus on biologics
PROV-303 (5 ECTS) Advanced Biopharmaceutics
GMB-401 (5-10 ECTS) Integrative health biosciences
- Clinical Trials
MPHARM-002A/PROV-105A (11 ECTS) Drug development and preclinical evaluation
- Discovery, Development and Optimization of Protein Drugs
MPHARM-002B/PROV-105B (11 ECTS) Pharmaceutical product development and rational use of medicines
- Biophamaceuticals - Challenges in formulation, production and quality control
MPHARM-009 (5 ECTS) Introduction to research methods in drug discovery and development – theory
FARM-314 (5 ECTS) Medicinal preparations I
- Basic Issues in the Formulation of Biophamaceuticals

Teaching Videos
2025 Biologiset Lääkkeet (in Finnish) (Unitube) Biologiset lääkkeet: Intro ja historia Linkki Biologiset lääkkeet: Tuotanto, stabiilius, säilytys ja käsittely Linkki Biologiset lääkkeet - Biosimilaarit, biobetterit ja lainsäädäntö Linkki Esimerkkejä biologisista lääkkeistä Biologiset lääkkeet - Metaboliset sairaudet Linkki Biologiset lääkkeet - Syövän hoitoon tarkoitetut vasta-aineet Linkki Biologiset lääkkeet - Vasta-ainekonjugaatit Linkki Biologiset lääkkeet - Bispesifiset vasta-aineet Linkki Biologiset lääkkeet - Vasta-aineet Alzheimerin taudin hoitoon Linkki Biologiset lääkkeet - Tulevaisuus Linkki

Teaching Videos

2025 Biologiset Lääkkeet (in Finnish) (Unitube)
1. Biologiset lääkkeet: Intro ja historia Linkki
2. Biologiset lääkkeet: Tuotanto, stabiilius, säilytys ja käsittely Linkki
3. Biologiset lääkkeet - Biosimilaarit, biobetterit ja lainsäädäntö Linkki
Esimerkkejä biologisista lääkkeistä
1. Biologiset lääkkeet - Metaboliset sairaudet Linkki
2. Biologiset lääkkeet - Syövän hoitoon tarkoitetut vasta-aineet Linkki
3. Biologiset lääkkeet - Vasta-ainekonjugaatit Linkki
4. Biologiset lääkkeet - Bispesifiset vasta-aineet Linkki
5. Biologiset lääkkeet - Vasta-aineet Alzheimerin taudin hoitoon Linkki
1. Biologiset lääkkeet - Tulevaisuus Linkki

Previous wetlab teaching
2014 - 2019 DPBM-135 Purification and Characterization of Recombinant Proteins (organized yearly until Covid-19) 2015 2017 2015 - 2017 DPBM Cloning Club (wetlab part) 2014 DPBM Practical Molecular Biology and Genetic Engineering (wetlab part) 2010 HBGS Tags in protein expression, detection and purification

Previous courses
2018-2022 DPBM-119 Protein Interaction Biochemistry 2018 Cell-based assays for protein interaction detection & quantification 2022 Cell-based assays for protein interaction detection & quantification 2017 DBPM CancerBio Summer School A short histrory of antiangiogenic tumor treatment 2014 DPBM Practical Molecular Biology and Genetic Engineering (lecture part) 2011 Lymphatic Research lecture series (six lectures) Lecture #1: Introduction to Lymphatic Research

Previous courses

2018-2022 DPBM-119 Protein Interaction Biochemistry
- 2018 Cell-based assays for protein interaction detection & quantification
- 2022 Cell-based assays for protein interaction detection & quantification
2017 DBPM CancerBio Summer School
- A short histrory of antiangiogenic tumor treatment
2014 DPBM Practical Molecular Biology and Genetic Engineering (lecture part)
2011 Lymphatic Research lecture series (six lectures)
- Lecture #1: Introduction to Lymphatic Research

Workshops
2015 - 2017 DPBM Cloning Club (workshop part)

The Study Voucher

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Since I am working at the University of Helsinki (UH), I should probably know a bit more about the upcoming Study Voucher pilot (Finnish: opintoseteli), as UH will offer a lot of courses within this program, including some of mine, e.g. the Recombinant DNA Technology (aka “Cloning”) course. I did some reading, and here is the gist of it:

How to install the color-blind-safe Nature Color Palette in Inkscape

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This one is short and easy on Linux. For instructions how to install this color palette on Windows or macOS, please visit https://github.com/atsuyaw/NatureColorPalette .

Still wondering what to study?

Sat, 20 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This is what I would do if I were 20 years old today: I would enter an interdisciplinary study program. My favorite among the programs offered in Finland is the International Master’s Programme in Pharmacy (officially “Master’s Programme in Pharmaceutical Research, Development and Safety”, abbreviated MPHARM) at the University of Helsinki. I give you 5 compelling reasons:

The Finnish Dream: A Pipe Dream?

Mon, 15 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A reality check for international students

Finland has been celebrated as the world’s happiest country for now eight years in a row . However, Finland is not only the happiest country, but also the country with one of the lowest fertility rates . In order to stabilize the pension system , Finland decided that it needs immigration, an idea very radical for a country that was 30 years ago almost as isolated from the rest of Europe as North Korea is nowadays from the rest of Asia. At that time, the international car sign for Finland was still SF for Soviet Finland (just kidding, the S obviously stands for Sweden). Finland wants to increase immigration by attracting foreign students to pursue degrees in Finland, hoping that some of them will stay in the country after graduation. Hence, Finland has become an increasingly popular destination for international students, particularly from Asia. Lured by promises of a high-quality life, excellent education, and abundant opportunities, many invest big time to pursue a degree in one of the Finnish universities . Ten years ago, university education was free for everybody (including all foreigners), but since since 2017, students from non-EU/EEA countries have needed to pay tuition fees . This was not the universities’ own decision, but mandated by the government.

Quiz results

Thu, 06 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Academic career

Sun, 03 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A tiny job market but the best European country to live in (considering global warming)

This month, I transitioned from Associate to Full Professor at my university. Trusting the opinion of my doctoral supervisor Kari Alitalo , my current supervisor , and mostly everybody else, I did not prepare a plan B, in case I would be denied tenure. As a Gen Xer on the Finnish job market, what could have been a realistic plan B? Looking at the international job market would make it easier to solve the problem by increasing opportunities by a factor of 100, even when considering only English- and German-speaking countries. Finland’s population is only about 5.6 million, and its job market is tiny. However, going abroad is not that easy if the rest of your family is opposed to a change of scenery. And why would I leave the only country in Europe whose summer temperatures are not health-threatening? Sure, global warming also hits the Nordic countries: We just had the longest uninterrupted heatwave in Finland since people are taking measurements (22 days of >30°C). But 30°C beats 40°C hands down. For my American friends & family: 30°C = 86°F, 40°C = 104°C.

Learning and Teaching Materials about Biological Drugs

Sun, 08 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Lecture slides “Biologiset lääkkeet” (Finnish)

Learning Materials in Finnish Language

Basic introduction to biological drugs

Title: Biologiset lääkkeet (Biological Drugs) Year: 2016 Creator: Fimea (Finnish Medicines Agency) URL: https://fimea.fi/laaketurvallisuus_ja_tieto/biologiset-laakkeet
Title: Biologiset lääkkeet (Biological Drugs) Year: 2023 Creator: Terveyskylä (Public information service provided a.o. by Finnish university hospitals) URL: https://www.terveyskyla.fi/laaketalo/tietoa-laakkeista/biologiset-laakkeet

Basic introduction to biosimilars

Teaching ”Biological Drugs” in Finnish

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In 2022, the steering group of the International Master’s Programme in Pharmaceutical Research, Development and Safety (MPHARM) collectively received the Innoopeli prize 2022 for developing teaching at the Faculty of Pharmacy . As a member of the steering group, I was a bit surprised as none of our students had graduated yet. However, the preliminary laurels received approval earlier this year, when the first batch of the students graduated .

Admission interview

Thu, 09 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

An increasing number of MSc study programs at our university are incorporating an interview into the admission procedure. Tiina Immonen from the TRANSMED program was the pioneer at the University of Helsinki who ventured first into this territory. If you are invited to an interview at the University of Helsinki, you have already taken the biggest hurdle, which is the evaluation of your application. To be accepted, you have to make sure not to screw up the interview. You don’t need to be stellar, but you need to meet expectations. The reason is that interviews are notoriously tricky to evaluate, and therefore, many programs use them primarily to screen for red flags.

Mia Sivén, the world's first professor of sustainable pharmacy

Fri, 05 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

When we were asking our foreign students what made them join the University of Helsinki, several of them mentioned sustainability aspects. Many of the research groups at the Faculty of Pharmacy study topics that are highly relevant to a sustainable future. For example, tackling the increasing threat of antibiotic resistance is a high priority for our faculty. And my group works on the planet’s most environmentally friendly protein production system. There is no part of a drug’s life cycle that could not be approached from a sustainability angle. Therefore, it was high time that this over-arching theme was finally acknowledged by establishing a dedicated professor position. To our knowledge, next month Mia Sivén will start her job as the world’s first professor of sustainable pharmacy . You are probably not surprised that I am very happy about this appointment.

It’s difficult to grade student’s assignments

Sat, 16 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I have been reading hundreds of student assignments this autumn. In many of these assignments, the students are expected to answer questions. Grading these assignments means deciding whether the answer is “right” or “wrong”. This is sometimes difficult. Most answers are somewhere between “right” and “wrong”. Therefore, the need for grading exposes a deeper problem: Before I can decide where on the spectrum from “right” to “wrong” the students’ answers fall, there needs to be an objective “right” and “wrong”. Otherwise, objective grades are an illusion to begin with (not even considering the problem of how to determine them reliably).However, all our scientific knowledge is preliminary. It is subject to modification or even reversal when new, better data becomes available. So, how can one grade any assignment with any certainty? Luckily, not all of our knowledge is equal. One important hallmark of a scientific statement is falsifiability , a concept that was perhaps first popularised by the science philosopher Karl Popper in his book The Logic of Scientific Discovery . What are examples of scientifically falsifiable theories?

Bio-Rad fixes our NGC

Wed, 20 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

UPDATE (situation Dec. 21st, 2024)

We just survived our protein purification course (DPDR-305, see also my other blog posts related to teaching . After having done about 25 runs with the “repaired” Bio-Rad NGC, I sadly have to conclude that the most significant issue remains: that the FPLC becomes unresponsive to commands issued manually. Also, the randomness of these disconnects persisted. Only one student group had problems, but we had several incidents during that single day. That, sadly, concludes our short stint into Bio-Rad territory for protein purification. All of this indicates that any further investments into this device will be wasted time and money. We have neither too much time nor too much money. If Bio-Rad wants to do anything from their own initiative, I am happy to let them do whatever it takes to get the machine into a usable state, but we won’t actively pursue any further actions.The best way to keep your FPLC device in good shape is to have a maintenance contract. Although we have been able to get money from our university to buy a top-of-the-line FPLC twice in the last 30 years, getting money for a service contract is much more difficult. One of the many reasons is that most grant periods are shorter than service contracts, which only make sense if you make them over several years.

Turing test with exam answers: Can I sniff out the AI?

Thu, 29 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In the Finnish daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, GPT-3 and Laura Ketonen from the University of Jyväskylä discuss how AI will affect student assessment ( Tekoäly ravistelee opiskelijoiden arviointia , English: Artificial intelligence shakes up student assessment). One of the obvious “applications” of AI would be exam cheating.Laura’s opinion piece provoked quite a few reactions. Some answered that AI produces hollow text . Others mentioned that AI does not have courage and initiative . It feels like we, as a human species, will soon be struggling with a generalized inferiority complex.In a natural science exam situation at the BSc or MSc level, the initiative is with the teacher, and the students are, by definition, reactive. How do you define hollow text when asking to explain glycoengineering? In life science, courage and initiative are essential features for any aspiring scientist. But without a solid body of knowledge as the foundation, courage and initiative rarely will lead to impactful new developments. At this moment, we cannot yet outsource this foundation to AI. Hence, we require from students a solid body of knowledge from which courage and initiative can draw to flourish. Perhaps, low-hanging fruits can be picked with courage and initiative alone. But solving today’s problems requires, in addition, a solid body of knowledge (“standing on the shoulders of giants”).When judging AI, we likely make the same mistakes as humans do with all new technologies: We overestimate its impact in the short run but underestimate its impact in the long run. Over and again, (narrow) AI has managed to break into fields that were previously reserved for humans. There is no reason to assume that this development will not continue. It may well be that the presently dominant approaches to AI (deep learning, machine learning, neural networks, statistical approaches) will not lead to major future breakthroughs toward human-like general AI, perhaps even self-aware AI. We don’t even know how human consciousness comes about. On the other hand, I agree with Daniel Dennett’s idea that there might be no hard problem of consciousness: Consciousness is what you get when you have solved all the easy problems. In any case, if a non-self-aware AI becomes indistinguishable from a self-aware AI, what’s the difference, and how would we be able to know? I am sure that at one point, we will also be able to outsource our knowledge completely. With Google, we have even started to make baby steps in this direction, but we need a better computer-brain interface to fully embrace the concept of knowledge outsourcing. Deep Blue beat international grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997. I did not want to accept this human defeat and declared the game unfair: Deep Blue crashed and needed to be rebooted once during the 6-game tournament, which - in my opinion - was equivalent to the human dying during the game (or at least being reanimated by CPR). In 2016, computers surpassed humans in the game Go, and today, they beat humans even at games like poker, requiring sophisticated psychological trickery like bluffing. To test how AI compares to students in an exam situation, Patrick added one AI-generated answer to the students’ responses in a recently written exam. This idea gave the grading an exciting spin! I think I knew what the AI answer was. However, I had played with GPT-3 before and knew that - untweaked - AI is overly correct and systematic in addressing questions.E.g., in a 3-part question, the AI normally systematically answers all three parts. Also, the AI did not know the exact content of my lectures, which made identifying the AI answer relatively easy. Patrick still needs to reveal whether I identified the AI correctly…The AI (or what I identified as the AI) performed worse than the best student, but overall it did really well. Clearly, our future exam questions need to focus even more on critical thinking and fictional examples, which the AI cannot know from its vast pool of training material.But given the increasing amount of information that AI will access in the future, AI can rely on other people’s critical thinking. The next generation of AI (ChatGPT-4 and Google’s LaMDA) is already waiting for public release… With some tweaking, Patrick could have easily fooled me. Maybe he did already… If he instructed the AI to break the answering pattern intentionally and if he did train GPT-3 with my lecture slides as reference material, all my bets are off.I’ll let you know whether I succeeded in identifying the AI correctly when Patrick reveals which answers were AI-generated. UPDATE: I (as well as the other teachers) did correctly identify the AI answers. The general opinion among us was that if we had not been alerted to the fact that one of the answers was AI-generated, we would not have noticed. The quality of the AI answers depended on the type of question. It appeared that (at this moment) a relatively easy way to throw off the AI is to give information needed to answer the question in a graphical format. But I am sure AI will learn to integrate images with text very soon.

Meet the teacher!

Fri, 31 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Almost 30 years after starting my academic career, I started to teach at the Faculty of Pharmacy (without much pedagogic experience and education). Mostly, I teach stuff that I have real-life research experience and expertise with: Recombinant DNA technology, genetic engineering, protein production and purification, and - most notably - protein drugs. Following the University of Helsinki motto Researchers teach, teachers research . Despite my lack of experience, I was part of the Helsinki University “Meet the teacher!” feature, which is aiming at the prospective International Master’s students: https://www.facebook.com/HelsinkiUniversity/posts/10160122296028083

Language boost

Fri, 17 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I am having a new attempt at learning Finnish! Until very recently, my career has progressed in Meilahti at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki. After the Research Fellow period financed by the Academy of Finland, my career prospects at Meilahti were meager at best, as almost all vacancies require good Finnish or Swedish language skills. In Finnish medical schools - unlike in many other study programs - you have to be able to teach in Finnish or Swedish. In other EU countries, there are many universities where you can study medicine without knowing a word of the local language, but Finland does not (yet) recruit foreign students for medical degrees.Before I started to study at the university, I was already once in similar language trouble. In the autumn of 1989, when the political changes in Eastern Europe made free travel possible, I decided to visit Hungary. My interest in Hungary originated from several Hungarian friends of mine, who were living in exile in former West Germany. When I arrived in Hungary in the spring of 1990, I did not speak a single word Hungarian. However, none of my Hungarian friends ever spoke anything to me but Hungarian. I remember with particular fondness Tomi and Timea and all their family and friends who patiently listened to my ramblings and corrected grammatical errors in my speech. Learning Finnish in Finland is different. Why does nobody want to put up with my bad Finnish? I have come across the idea that Finnish people are not used to foreign accents. I don’t subscribe to this explanation. The former Eastern European countries were at the time also isolated and linguistically homogeneous - in much the same way as Finland. Is it perhaps because nowadays nobody seems to have time for anything? In the autumn semester, I took part in a Finnish language course offered by the University of Helsinki. The course was part of the language boost (kielibuusti) project. Studying languages takes time. We always wonder how young children are so good at learning languages, but we forget that they are learning full-time. The Finnish language course has certainly affected my other work, and for this reason, I fully understand those foreign researchers who do not even waste a single second learning Finnish.As far as learning Finnish is concerned, I think the problem is not so much with the course offerings, although they could be better. The problem is rather that you don’t get to exercise your Finnish in real life because there is always someone around who - for very good reasons - doesn’t know Finnish or doesn’t want to learn it. In my own lab, all the native languages of the lab members - including Finnish - are minority languages. And without exception, all the people I talk to speak excellent English. It takes real effort to use any other language than English (that also applies to my own mother tongue, German). One of the goals of the Language Boost course was to get ourselves a language buddy, someone with whom we could communicate regularly in Finnish. After half a year, I am still without a language buddy. Although the teachers on the course were excellent, two hours of Finnish a week is unfortunately not enough.I know several researchers who have come to Finland from abroad and who speak excellent Finnish. However, most of them have family ties to Finland. Therefore, they have had to deal with Finns who do not speak English. They were forced to learn to speak Finnish. The same thing happened to me in Hungary 30 years ago: most people did not learn English at school. We had only one language of communication, and I used it all day long in all situations.This post was inspired by Reetta Vairimaa's article "Claudia and Celia" in the magazine Yliopistolainen (1/2018), which unfortunately is not available online.``Here is another aspect of the problem: There is simply not enough time to study Finnish for most foreign researchers. Compared to their native counterparts, they have already a higher workload even without learning Finnish. Building up a network - both professionally and privately - is lots of work. The numbers of Finnish learners at universities (20-30%) that were mentioned in this Acatiimi article ([Too few people study Finnish or Swedish](https://acatiimi.fi/2022/02/07/too-few-people-study-finnish-or-swedish/)) sound very high to me. I know lots of foreign researchers but very few of them have substantial knowledge of Finnish (but perhaps that is only true for Ph.D. students, which are overrepresented in my distorted view).

How attractive is Finland for international students?

Sun, 29 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

One apology upfront: All the links in this post are to Finnish sites, demonstrating one of the problems that foreign students face in Finland: a language that doesn’t resemble any other European language (apart from Estonian and Hungarian, which also belong to Finno-Ugric language family ).Foreign students are generally having a good time in Finland. Although not everything is perfect, the University of Helsinki (and Finland in general) is worth considering when you want to study abroad. This is the bottom line from a feedback survey among more than 800 international students from the years 2020 and 2021. Especially the high quality of the teaching was appreciated. Other points in which Helsinki University excelled were the safe environment and the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.However, the latter has also a downside, as more encounters and discussions with the academic staff were on the wish list of the students as well as more social support. This is hardly surprising given that international students cannot fall back on the same networks as the locals when they arrive in the country. The worst single issue appeared to be the reception of the students. Arriving and dealing with an unknown and incomprehensible bureaucracy is often too much for newcomers. Discrimination was only experienced by 4% of the respondents and among them, language discrimination and loneliness were the most common.I always warn students who tell me that they plan to apply to the University of Helsinki. You want an honest opinion on whether to start your studies in Finland? Ok: It can get pretty cold and it will get REALLY dark in the winter. However, Helsinki is still one of the more livable places when it comes to the cold and dark season. It rarely gets below 0°F (-17.8°C), and being on the South coast it’s also one of the least dark places. And global warming is doing its best to increase the temperatures. Finland is already the insider’s bet for long-term real estate investments: still cheap enough, but with extreme growth potential once climate change converts Southern Europe into a smelting furnace. However, these scenarios will fully realize only the current political decision-makers have already kicked the bucket. But if you are in for the long haul, Finland might be THE place to be. But again, if the gulf stream collapses, you’ll be thrown back to square one. Thank your parents for the mess they have left you ( https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/05/climate-crisis-scientists-spot-warning-signs-of-gulf-stream-collapse ).Unfortunately, as good as Finland might be for studying, staying in Finland for good is a different story. Even though Finland needs to boost immigration to make up for its declining and aging population, there are still unfortunately too many hurdles to overcome before settling down becomes a realistic option for most foreigners. The language is only one of them, others being mentioned in a recent article in the largest Finnish daily newspaper (Helsingin Sanomat) are the difficulty to become integrated into the Finnish society, the for foreigners incomprehensible bureaucracy, and the low salary levels. But also growing resentments towards foreigners within the Finnish population, manifested in the success of the “Finns Party” (formerly known as “True Finns”), are not helping. Most other European countries also fight with right-wing political currents. In my home country Germany, the AfD (roughly equivalent to the Finns Party) is not considered by any of the democratic parties as a possible coalition partner (wishful thinking on my part?). But here in Finland, the Finns Party has been already in a coalition government, and only the social democrats and the leftist coalition have a clear “no” position in this matter.Just recently, the newly elected major of Helsinki Juhana Vartiainen commented on the attractivity of the Finnish labor market for foreigners:“A miserable failure on Finland’s part. The political consciousness has been very slow to even grasp that we need labor immigration at all.” ( Helsingin Sanomat, 28.08.2021 ).But all that aside, academic teaching is at a very high level. And it is free for EU/EFTA residents (and holders of qualifying degrees from those countries). For paying students, the tuition fees are a bargain compared to many other universities that play in the same league (between 13000 and 18000 Euros per year, depending on the study program). However, the university staff will have to pay a high price to maintain this quality. For the current decade (2020-2030), the ministry of education has the goal to increase the number of completed university degrees by 100000 ( https://www.acatiimi.fi/4_2021/15.php ). At the same time, the university budget has been cut. The government will probably compensate for the cuts in a media-attraction gathering “rescue the university” move to distract from the fact, that we need dozens of millions on top of this to provide the same high level of teaching for those 100000 additional degrees over the coming years. At the research level, academic staff has been fighting an uphill battle since 2005, when the inflation-adjusted budget for R&D decreased for the first time. But meanwhile, students start to feel the lack of sufficient funding e.g. when their teachers simply do not have anymore the same amount of time for them as they used to.I have no other choice than to advise students against an academic career in general. Most other European countries have similar problems, but perhaps not at the same level as Finland. And the students know that academic funding is especially bad in Finland .

TuKoKe success for our TET interns!

Wed, 09 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Here in Finland, 8- or 9-graders make a one- or two-week “Introduction to working life” internship at a workplace of their choice ( TET, työelämään tutustumisjakso ). The Covid-19 pandemic has also screwed this one thoroughly up, but our lab did manage to host a few interns when the Covid-19 numbers were pretty low in the autumn.One group, consisting of Pessi Bask, Rasmus Pouta and Okko Siljander from the Käpylä Primary School did study the suitability of run-of-the-mill plastics used for 3D printing for the culture of mammalian cells . Under the supervison of Niklas Koppatz, they entered with this project the TuKoKe nation-wide science- and technology fair and not only won the third price , but also additionally the Aalto University’s Design Factory Award and a stipend from the Finnish Invention Foundation (Keksintösäätiö) for the inventive nature of their work. Congratulations!

Our first OER (Open Educational Resource)

Wed, 03 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

When I started my new position at the Faculty of Pharmacy, it was clear that I would be going to do more formal teaching than before. Even though I have lectured before, I typically was only modifying a conference presentation in which I presented the research work from our laboratory. However, that does not fly for undergraduate students, and hence I am assembling lectures from scratch. Although there is much hype about Open Science, there are few or no open educational resources for the topics that I know to teach: genetic and protein engineering, protein drugs, biologics. Because I think, that there should be more openly available teaching material, I decided to make my lectures openly available. However, I soon realized that it is very difficult to replace copyrighted material with free alternatives such as public domain or Creative Commons -licensed material. 80% of the images and illustrations are easy to replace, the next 15% take you as much time as the first 80%, and for the last few images it seems impossible to find copyright-unencumbered alternatives. In the end, I generated the lion share of material myself. For this specific lecture, I have not found any usable image of Judah Folkman . Needless to say that if money was not an issue, I could just buy one for a few hundred bucks, but it still would not be possible for others to reuse it. As a temporary solution, I drew an image myself. I am not good at drawing, help me out it if you can!Today, I have finally uploaded my first lecture to the Library of Open Educational Resources : https://aoe.fi/#/materiaali/1212 . It was an introductory lecture to Protein Drug Discovery & Development for BSc students of Pharmacy (course PROV-105), which dates back to September 9th, 2020. The Library of Open educational Resources is maintained by the Finnish Ministry of Education. I also made an entry to Merlot collection (which is perhaps the biggest OER catalog): https://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=773405613.However , I am not entirely satisfied with the situation, since I prepared the lecture using Google Slides. Why Google slides? Sadly, it is the only functioning real-time collaborative presentation software. Due to this, the original version of the lecture slides is not available from aoe.fi. However, there is a link to the Google Slides. I have obviously included the same presentation in PDF and ODF format after converting it and all the editable source files (mostly in SVG format). And if the collaborative online editing of LibreOffice should finally become usable, we will probably switch to using that instead of Google Slides. The live online version is the more useful resource. In addition to the fact that this is the original version of the slide show, it will be also updated regularly (since I will give this lecture repeatedly), while the uploaded PDF/ODF file will become more and more obsolete over time.UPDATEI have meanwhile managed to upload another lecture to https://aoe.fi . All of my future contributions will be available from my collection page .* *

Editing Zoom recordings of teaching sessions with FFmpeg

Wed, 25 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Based on student feedback, we have been organizing a new course for the TRANSMED MSc program about drug discovery and development. It is what you call in German a “Schupperkurs”. I never have found a satisfactory translation of this word in English. It means that we just want to raise the students’ interest in this course. If they like it, they can take any of the many in-depth courses that are offered e.g. at the Faculty of Pharmacy , where there will be more teaching in English in the coming years due to the planned International MSc program in Pharmacy.

For Science to Finland

Mon, 26 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

When you think about going abroad to learn or do science, you mostly think of Anglo-American countries. Although still very attractive, the US and England have been losing some of their appeal. Staying in Europe is not anymore a dead-end for your scientific career. Finland is certainly not on the top of the list when looking at potential European destinations. However, especially among students, Finland gained a reputation as an insider’s tip for exchange periods abroad. Among these, German students form the biggest group, followed by French, Spanish, Dutch, and Italian students. Most of these come via the European Union-sponsored Erasmus exchange program. I recently wrote a guest blog on Claudia’s Helsinki about coming to Finland as a scientist. The blog post is in German, but its bottom line can be summarized in one sentence: there are several scientific areas, where Finland does world-class research. And Finnish universities are increasingly offering international study programs (mostly M.Sc. and Ph.D. programs). These study programs have a tuition fee, but if you come from an EU country (or the degree you apply with is from an EU country) you are exempt from the tuition fee. See what M.Sc. and Ph.D. programs are offered at the University of Helsinki: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/admissions/explore-our-international-masters-programmeshttps://www.helsinki.fi/en/research/doctoral-education/doctoral-schools-and-programmes

Protein Drug Discovery & Development

Wed, 09 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday, I had my first Zoom lecture about protein drug discovery and development. I hope that the students did get at least something out of it. My goal is to cc-license the complete presentation but there are still a few images that I need to replace. A first attempt is rarely a great performance, and we had our fair share of technical problems. My headset failed for the first time since I bought it at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. And the Zoom polling functionality disappeared before the students had any chance to use it and we did not manage to bring it up again.Here is the link to the live Google Slides: https://mjlab.fi/pddd . These will keep changing (= improving). Below you find the PDF snapshot of the presentation from the actual lecture day. The whole presentation is CC-licensed. So feel free to reuse it. All source files (mostly in Inkscape SVG format) are also available from here: https://mjlab.fi/pddd-files . I have done all the SVG files in Inkscape , but you can also open them in any browser or edit them in Adobe Illustrator. If you want to edit or extract images, the easiest is perhaps to download the presentation in Microsoft PowerPoint, LibreOffice Impress, or PDF format. I still have not figured out how to share the Google Slides presentation without making the original editable for everyone (after all, I need some control over the content of my lectures).Be aware, that at this moment, the presentation still contains eight images on Fair Use or with unknown licensing terms (even though the legal concept of fair use does not really exist outside the USA). All image sources (excluding my own images) are listed in the file README.txt with their respective licenses and source URLs. Some images are so old that I was not anymore able to locate their original URLs. Hence I am not sure about their licensing terms. I will replace these over the next few weeks when I manage to get hold of CC-licensed or public domain equivalents.

Bullying from the top

Fri, 22 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Some numbers from the Nature 2019 graduate survey ( https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03535-y ) are discomforting. Very few of the respondents were from Finland, and therefore the aggregate from Finland has to be taken with a grain of salt. But every single incidence is one incidence too much. What worries me most is a) that bullied PhD students in Finland feel that they cannot speak out about their experiences without repercussions, and b) that bullying from the top might be more prominent in Finland as opposed to bulling from peers (if one includes other academic staff into the “top”). One student reportedly experienced bullying from the programme director (which falls under “other”, which was not separately listed by Nature in the graph). Numbers do not add up to 100% due to rounding and multiple mentionings.

Protein Purification Course 2019

Wed, 31 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

We are again hosting the DPBM protein purification course this December in our lab. Secure your place as this practical course is popular and there are only 16 seats. You can bring your own protein and we will individualize the course program based on your needs!More information: http://research.med.helsinki.fi/corefacilities/b3p/teaching.htmlRegistration : https://courses.helsinki.fi/en/dpbm-135/131042336

Apply successfully to the University of Helsinki

Sun, 28 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

What are my chances to be accepted into a Helsinki University Master’s Program?

This differs greatly from year to year and between the different programs. The admission rates for most individual programs have been anywhere between 5% and 40%, with popular programs like Environmental Change and Global Sustainability or Economics at the low end and e.g. Forest Sciences and Theoretical and Computational Methods at the high end.

Thus we learn our lessons, not for life, but for the lecture-room

Tue, 27 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Non vitae sed scholae discimus (“Thus we learn our lessons, not for life, but for the lecture-room”). 2000 years ago Seneca wrote this to one of his students. My son is of the same opinion: Much of his curriculum content is irrelevant for real life. Unfortunately, I have to agree (and many experts do agree as well). Within a few years, the initial pride and joy of starting school are followed by boredom and disinterest. Just a few weeks into the autumn semester, the kids are merely waiting for the Christmas vacation. Learning should be fun and I wonder what is going wrong? How does the school manage to kill off the natural curiosity and motivation that quickly?In the beginning, I argued with my son, that it is not very important WHAT you learn, but that you learn how to learn, which should be possible with almost any topic. However, while perhaps true, this notion is at the same time a confession of failure by the ppeople, who make and implement the curricula at our schools. Why does it seem so difficult to choose topics that are interesting and relevant?100 years ago, reading, writing and basic arithmetics might have been enough. Knowledge is exploding these days, but the only answer of curriculum planners is the cram more into the plans without getting rid of teaching obsolete factual knowledge. That leaves little freedom for the teaching of methodological competencies which are deeply needed in today’s society.I get it, that schools have limited financial and personnel possibilities. However, there are teachers, who - against all material limits (in one of the richest countries in the world!) - manage to deliver a modern and enjoyable customer (sic!) experience.As an answer to the future needs of our society, some people try to push the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). However, especially in these subjects, the knowledge and information growth is so fast that curricula (which are by definition rather inert) and also most teachers are not able to keep pace with. Even though the knowledge might be relevant, the more important lessons that should be taught are not of factual knowledge, but of methodological knowledge. And methodological knowledge can be taught with highly interesting and relevant topics:

Cell-based assays (Protein Interaction Biochemistry 2018)

Mon, 14 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

A lecture about cell-based assays to determine and quantify protein interactions (part of the 2018 course Protein Interaction Biochemistry). Contains also a short introduction to ITC (isothermal calorimetry). CC-licensed.

Strike at the University of Helsinki

Tue, 27 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

A strike warning has been issued for tomorrow (28.2.) for the University of Helsinki. The reason is that the negotiations about between the employers and employees about the wages and working conditions are stuck and the strike is used as a means to speed up the movement of the employer’s negotiation position towards an acceptable compromise. Business as usual? After all, there hasn’t been a strike at the university for a very long time…While almost everybody agrees that Finland’s future is built on knowledge and innovation, the appreciation of the very people that are generating knowledge and innovation seems to have hit an all-time low if appreciation is reflected by working conditions and payment levels.I guess the underlying cause is not so much the concrete offerings of the employer (or the lack thereof), but the disregard and disrespect for academic education, research, and development that has been growing over the years, accelerated by the 2015-elect government, which refuses to invest into the future. Universities should not behave like companies trying to maximize their profit on the cost of their employees and the quality of their product. With some exceptions , everybody with a little bit of self-respect is participating. All major unions, including the students’ and professors’ union, are supporting this action. Apparently, professors will go on strike for the first time in the history of this country ( https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/finnish_professors_walk_out_in_first-ever_strike/10095355 ).

Practical Course: Purification and Characterization of Recombinant Proteins (DPBM-135)

Sun, 10 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Teaching material, results, etc. for the DPBM course “Purification and Characterization of Recombinant Proteins” ( https://courses.helsinki.fi/en/DPBM-135/120171139 ):

Cloning club - workshop material

Tue, 30 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Collection of the course materials for the DPBM -organized Cloning Club . There are files in (at least) two different formats for each lecture: PDF and ODP (Open Document Presentation). The ODP file is editable using LibreOffice software. If you want to open it with Microsoft Office, you need to convert it first using either LibreOffice or some online conversion tool (like cloudconvert ). The material by the course organizer (in Open Document and PDF format) is available under the creative commons license (excluding adapted material, which is explicitly marked). Material from course participants (in PowerPoint format) is provided at the terms of the creators. I might add improved versions the meeting/lecture slides later based on participants feedback.

The Staden package on Ubuntu for bioinformatics dinosaurs

Wed, 27 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Mostly we use the SnapGene software when we check the sequences of our DNA constructs. However, sometimes SnapGene’s alignment view is not flexible enough and then I fall back to using the ancient Staden Package . I just had upgraded from Ubuntu 14.04 to 16.04 and hence did not have Staden installed. I was pleasantly surprised when the installation of Staden took only about 15 seconds because finally - thanks to the Debian Med team - Staden is available from the universe repository (actually already since October 2014).sudo apt install stadenStaden is clearly not as intuitive as it could be, but it is very powerful and lends itself to automated processing of data. If you have the opportunity to learn it, I would encourage you to do so. The Finnish CSC recorded the Staden course from 2004, in which I participated and you can get the recordings from Funet TV . I just had briefly considered switching from Ubuntu to SuSE because of the ongoing wireless connection debacle that Canonical can’t seem to fix, but considering how non-trivial a manual install of Staden is, this is a big plus for Ubuntu. There are obviously dedicated Linux distributions for bioinformatics purposes, but they all tend to lag behind the latest and greatest developments of the major distros.

Cloning Club

Wed, 22 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Together with the Doctoral Programme in Biomedicine (DPBM) we are organizing in autumn 2016 a workshop and a practical course about cloning (course code 921244).Dates and venue (workshop): Weekly discussion workshop (8 events each 1 to 1.5 hours) starting Tuesday 30.8.2016; venue: meeting room 7 (Biomedicum Helsinki, 5th floor, except 27.09. and the last workshop on 25.10., which take place in BM B136A); 1 creditDates and venue (practical course): Decentralized lab course (at the participants schedule and venue or - for participants without own access to the necessary facilities - in the first two weeks of November in our lab); 1 creditCourse information page: http://www.helisci.fi/hbgs/cloning-club2016 Registration page: https://elomake.helsinki.fi/lomakkeet/71701/lomake.html Detailed course info: PDF Advertisement poster: PDF Course material: Material will be added after every meeting here . Cloning has the appeal of being boring. However, all starts with DNA. Genetic engineering is not only here to stay, but will become more and more important: we are just scratching the surface of its potential. Almost all biomedical research involves DNA constructs: expression vectors to transfect cells, shuttle plasmids to make viruses, constructs to generate transgenic animals.The skill to generate a DNA construct is needed until the arrival of that promised device, which will spit out any plasmid a few hours after you have fed it the plasmid’s sequence. Many new technologies are available and as a result, it is more difficult to choose than in the old days when restriction enzyme cloning was the only option. Today, demands and options are endless and you need to choose the right strategy to maximize success and speed.

FPLC Protein purification course

Mon, 04 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Eight postgraduate students registered for the FPLC protein purification course , which took place in December. If I learned anything, than that protein purification during a course should be done ALWAYS with a protein and a protocol, that has been used before successfully MANY times. Student-provided proteins are a great source for learning, but the time restraints of a course format did not allow us to finish the purification of these proteins during the course.Technical Problems with the new Äkta Avant 25In addition, the Äkta Avant 25 , that we newly purchased from GE Healthcare this summer, broke TWICE during the course. First the controlling computer broke (RAID failure). HP delivered the replacement drive within 24 hours and after the RAID had rebuilt itself, we could continue the course. However, during the first run after this incident, the Äkta ran into an overpressure problem. We identified a faulty flow restrictor as the cause, but we did not want to continue as we have had severe problems with air bubbles in previous runs. Therefore we performed the runs on the old Äkta Explorer 100 . GE Healthcare quickly had their service engineer check out the system, but since he did not have a spare with him, we had to wait until Monday 14.12. until the Äkta Avant was again fully functional.What we purified: soluble VEGFR-3 (VEGFR-3/Fc) and HepsinWe did purify soluble human VEGF receptor-3 (the first three domains of its extracellular domain connected to the constant Fc part of human IgG). This is a purification that we have done many times. It is equivalent to the purification of antibodies using Protein A sepharose.We had prepared in advance conditioned cell culture medium. We produce most of our proteins in insect cells (mostly Drosophila S2) and the VEGFR-3/Fc had been secreted by the S2 cells into the medium after induction of the metallothionein promoter with 1 mM Cu2+ for about 4.5 days. The preparation of the medium for purification consists only of 1) getting rid of the cells by centrifugation and 2) filtration to remove precipitates and other small particles that might clog the column. There is no need to adjust the pH.Rapid neutralization after low pH elution IS IMPORTANTWe ran the medium over a disposable 5-ml HiTrap recombinant Protein A column over night at about 1ml/min and eluted with a low pH buffer. The eluted 2-ml fractions were immediately neutralized with 400µl 1M Tris pH 8.5. Here we made a small mistake during one of the two purifications. GE Healthcare had not released the casettes for the 5-ml-collection tubes (they still have not done so even though they did promise them already for September 2015) and we used 15-ml Falcon tubes to collect 2-ml fractions, into which we had pre-aliqotted 400 µl of the neutralization solution. However, the mixing in these tubes was not efficient and the prolonged exposure to low pH resulted in a partial damage to our protein. This can be seen when comparing the size exclusion chromatograms of Group 2 versus Group 4: For Group 4 the first peak (aggregated protein) is much larger and more heterogenous compared to the same peak for Group 2.In fact, when VEGFR-3/Fc is eluted by low pH from protein A columns, it always precipitates at higher concentrations soon after elution, but dissolves again upon neutralization. This did not happen in the fractions 5.A.3 and 5.A.4 (Group 4) due to the inefficient mixing of elutate and neutralization buffer in the 15-ml-Falcon tube (the fraction size of 2 ml was probably to blame as well; 1 ml would have been better). During the run for Group 2, we removed the tubes immediately after the run had ended and thereby mixed the buffers, while for Group 4 the run finished during night time and the eluate remained largely unmixed until the morning.Alternatively, we could have eluted with a highly concentrated chaotropic salt at near-neutral pH (which we’ll do next time in case we have an automated run where the elution happens in the middle of the night). Pierce offers a (proprietary) “gentle” elution buffer of pH 6.6. I don’t know the Pierce buffer composiiton, but it is a highly concentrated solution of some chaotropic salt. 3M potassium/sodium thiocyanate or 4M magnesium chloride in buffered solutions around pH 7 are frequently used chaotropic salts for this purpose.HepsinThe student-provided proteins were challenging. First, their concentrations in the starting material was very low. While we can see clearly the protein when the VEGFR-3/Fc conditioned medium is run on a PAGE gel and stained with Coomassie, no such band is visible for the Hepsin. In addition, it appeared that a significant fraction of the protein seems not to contain the histag (anymore) and therefore is not captured with the first purification step. The fraction of Hepsin-H6 that does bind to the Ni2+ sepharose elutes already at an imidazole concentration of 20 mM, which makes washing the column challenging. The Hepsin with the longer histag (H10) survives the 20 mM imidazole wash, but it suffers also from low expression levels.Below are the chromatograms of the individual runs and the annoteded images of the Comassie-stained PAGE gels. The detailed protocol for the operation of the Äkta Avant 25 is still under preparation…

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.

2-week Lab Course

Tue, 30 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I had no idea how much work it is to organize a practical lab course. Had I known, Pirjo would have had a much harder time to convince me to give this course for the Doctoral Programme in Biomedicine (DPBM)l . Kari had warned me… The accompanying lecture course had been running from September to November. The practical course had been offered with 16 free slots, but that was totally unrealistic given that we were confined to my 23.7 square meters of lab space. Teaching lab space is available, but without equipment and all the other infrastructure that is needed for such an undertaking. 8 people registered to the practical course and - luckily - half of those pulled out in the last moment with insufficient possibility to commit to the heavy workload that the course required. Thus we ended up with four students and three projects. Under no circumstances would we have managed with more.The idea was to offer each participant the possibility to realize his own DNA cloning and protein expression project. Something that would be relevant for his own PhD studies. For that matter, I had meetings with the three groups one month in advance to plan the cloning and to order the necessary materials. We were working in parallel on the following three projects:

Practical Molecular Biology and Genetic Engineering

Mon, 08 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Collection of the presentation slides for the DPBM course Practical Molecular Biology and Genetic Engineering . There are files in (at least) two different formats for each lecture: PDF and ODP (Open Document Presentation). The ODP file is editable using LibreOffice software. If you want to open it with Microsoft Office, you need to convert it first using either LibreOffice or some online conversion tool (like cloudconvert ). All material is available under the creative commons license . I might add improved versions of the lecture slides later based on participants’ feedback. The slide about restriction enzymes (REs) and how to calculate the necessary RE amounts to digest a certain amount of DNA is in the file of Lecture 1.

Adjunct Professor

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Since December 13th, 2011, I am an adjunct professor (Finnish: dosentti ) at the University of Helsinki. This is not a tenured position, but a title, which requires a certain amount of scientific success after completing the PhD and teaching experience ( more about this in Finnish ).

How I became an "Adjunct Professor" ("dosentti") at the University of Helsinki

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Compared to getting my PhD degree, the “dosentti” thingy was easy. I started in the beginning of 2011 and received the title the same year in December. I don’t know whether the process differs between different Finnish universities and some of the formalities might be specific to the University of Helsinki , but nevertheless, below I list the steps I took to get the title. There are also instructions available from here .

Introduction into lymphatic research

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Lecture 1: The cardiovascular system vs. the lymphatic system: Anatomy and Physiology
Lecture 2: Molecular make-up of the lymphatic system
Lecture 3: The lymphatic system in disease
Lecture 4: Model organisms in lymphatic research , .tex file
Lecture 5: Fundamental techniques in lymphatic research
Lecture 6: Current questions in lymphatic research

HBGS course

Mon, 10 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000

All documents related the the HBGS course Tags in protein expression, detection and purification. Most documents are available in both PDF and OpenOffice format. Feel free to repurpose the documents. They are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 1.0 License .

Storage and Handling of Proteins

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Tyrosine Kinase Receptors

Sun, 07 Apr 2002 00:00:00 +0000