Back (temporarily) in Gothenburg!
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...
Greece – so much more than just Greek Salad and Souvlaki
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...
Pig tales: My experience working with pigs
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...
Together mode
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...
Pressure building up: everything, everywhere, all at once!
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...
Representing COLOTAN around the world
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...
A brief summary of my first year as a researcher
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....
Becoming the Lupine Lady?
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....
My gut feeling knows best
Some things never change… Since my college years, which were not so long ago, trains have always been a constant in my life and it seems that no matter where I want to go in Italy, Bologna FS is a nearly inevitable stop. This is one of the many things I’ve learned in...
“My first year in Belgium” or “Mijn eerste jaar in België”
Reading my own headline, I can’t believe that an entire year of my PhD has almost passed. 52 weeks, 365 days, 8760 hours, 525 600 minutes or 31 536 000 seconds have passed since I moved here. It feels like yesterday that I arrived but so much has happened and changed...
The Swede in Denmark
I vividly remember coming to Copenhagen last year — it’s like it was yesterday. I remember it being quite cold (even though it was April…), and having a nose swollen and itchy from several PCR tests. Despite these massive setbacks (the Danes like sarcasm...
Oops, how did I end up in Uppsala?
This story starts some time ago, around May 2020. I’ve just successfully defended my master thesis online, amidst the pandemic, so no there will be no graduation ceremony, let alone any trip. Still, I have a joyful time for one day before reality hits hard: I am...
A journey from India to Sweden!
It was a typical day, and everyone was working from home or enjoying so-called holidays at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Universities were closed, and I was trying to finish my masters’ project from home (How? It was based on 90% simulations and the remaining 10%...
The Communication Puzzle: Lessons I Learned During Science is Wonderful! 2021
irst of all, congrats. We made it: 2021 is finally over! I am super grateful to still be standing after another year of living COVIDly. So much seems unchanged, yet almost everything has pretty much changed. I’ve learned a lot during the last year, but in my mind,...
It’s all Greek to me!
A big dream of mine has always been to study for some time abroad. After finishing my pharmacy studies in Germany, the time for the practical year came and I had the chance to spend half of it at the Infectious Disease and Pharmacokinetics Laboratory at the University...
What’s a Greek doing in Cork?
Ever since I was a teenager, I knew science was going to be my life partner. I remember myself being intrigued by biological phenomena and diseases and researching about them (the outbreak of Influenza virus back then certainly played a role). I would always ask...
Getting started
Looking out of my window and at the weather forecast for the coming days, it is undeniable that my recent decision to buy a better rain jacket was a good one. Unfortunately, it can sometimes be a little more difficult to tell in advance whether a decision will be...
May the power be with me!
I was pondering how to begin my first blog. And I suddenly went back in time to a bit earlier than the beginning of my COLOTAN story. During the last year of my master study, I decided that continuing in academia would suit me better. For this reason, I was already...
How My Life Changed in 5 Months: A Digest
ither by choice or chance, you’ve reached my post. Not just any post, but the first in my series of posts. And we started straight away with a plot twist: it wasn’t my life that changed; in reality, it was just me. But I don’t want to confuse you! First...
From confusion to enlightment
“COLO-what?” These were exactly my thoughts when I first read about the project online. But first things first: It was a given for me, that I don’t “only” want to finish my studies with a master’s degree but top it off with a PhD. Additionally, I didn’t want to just...