We, the ESRs of COLOTAN, are often discussing scientific problems, ideas, and solutions. Often, these difficult topics come before everything else… After all, 3-4 years of a PhD pass by quickly, the desire to publish new discoveries is big, and the difficulties can be significant. Therefore, collaborations and teamwork are essential in these cases. I have already extensively presented myself ...

The European university consortium of pharmaceutical sciences, also known as ULLA, is a network that aims to enhance collaboration within education and research in pharmaceutical sciences. The first question is, where does the acronym ULLA come from? ULLA is an acronym based on the names of the cities of its founding universities: Uppsala, London, Leiden and Amsterdam. Since 1992 when ...

It´s good to be back! I am, of course, talking about writing this blog, and not about one of my favorite cities ever. 😉 This past year has been packed to the brim with work and activities. Conferences, lectures, teaching, and of course, attending the world’s biggest fitness run held in Denmark, the DHL Relay Race. Here, four colleagues of ...

My associations with Greece? Family holidays when I was young. My parents are both very interested in history, therefore it often felt like we were turning over every single stone at archeological sites. Especially great when it was 38 °C in the shade… Though highly educational, it’s nothing you really enjoy doing as a kid. Coming to Greece for my ...

It has been quite some time since I last wrote a blog, which is a simple way to reflect on the amount of work I have had for the last year or so. 2023 started in the same way 2022 ended: tons of work, long hours in the lab running experiments, and lots of planning ahead. One thing I learned ...

A recent experience made me painfully aware of how much context matters – imagine you’re sitting in a big online meeting, listening to one of your peers present, and suddenly a message notification pops up on the shared screen: “The project manager looking down on all of us”. What would your first reaction be? How would you feel about the ...

Pressure is defined as force per area, which seems to be describing my 2nd year of PhD, lots of things (force) happening in many aspects (area) of my life. Something I wish society would be more aware of is that doing research is a wild card, you experience many challenges and discoveries in ways you cannot imagine beforehand. The good ...

With Christmas just around the corner, it only seems natural to reflect on the past year. In this blog post I would like to share two of my highlights in 2022, namely attending the ULLA summer school in Uppsala, Sweden and traveling to the US for the GPEN2022 conference. I have to say that I feel lucky and grateful for ...

It has been almost a year since the last time I wrote to you. A year full of learning, exploring, conducting experiments, and the stress keeps piling up. When I embarked on this journey, I never thought I could transform into the person or the researcher I am today. Let us start from the beginning, shall we? When I first ...

LATE. This blog post is late. One of those words that makes planners and lovers of deadlines cringe and squirm with discomfort. Like nails scraping across a chalkboard, making your skin crawl… And yet – sometimes it simply can’t be helped, unpleasant though it may be. Sometimes, impeding factors are simply out of your control. Science seldom works like clockwork! ...