Monthly archives: November 2021

2 posts

Freshly minted PhD – what’s next?

Professors of Practice Timo Veromaa

A boat is out on the bay in front of our summer home. Three young men are standing – fishing. It’s an early autumn morning, but these fishermen seem to be out of luck. The boat is drifting slowly towards the open sea, perhaps towards better fishing waters. The fishermen seem determined, resolutely continuing and heading towards the horizon. Or, at least, the skipper of the boat is very active.

Could this be about committing to a goal? Perhaps the fishermen are pursuing their common passion – or at least the skipper’s passion.

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The value of a drug is measured along the way

Juha Laine Professors of Practice

How would you concretely measure the value of your work in the short and long term? During my lecture, I asked such a question from the students studying drug development at the University of Turku. The question was quite difficult. I received only one answer. Well, as anyone who teaches knows, even simple questions may get only one answer.

According to the brave respondent, the value of the work done in drug development could be measured by the number of patients treated with that drug in the future. It was easy to offer a countering question: Is the development of orphan drugs then not valuable in this sense? There is considerable uncertainty about the future number of patients in the initial stages of a drug development project.

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