University of Helsinki

After a little delay here we have the report of our third visit, written bij Kasia Grabowska


Thursday 10th May 
It was our 3rd day in a capital of Finland. Today we took a public transport (at 7:45!) to the Viikki Campus of University of Helsinki. There are 8 faculties in the university and four of them are situated in the Viikki Campus (Faculty of Pharmacy, Biosciences, Veterinary Medicine and Agriculture and Forestry). We visited the faculty of Agriculture and Forestry which combines: Food Technology, Human Nutrition, Food Chemistry, Chemistry and Biochemistry and Environmental and Food Microbiology groups.
As we arrived at the campus, we recognized a familiar face. We found Jaap Dijkshoorn, who used to be MSc student of Yvette. Jaap is currently doing his internship in the UoH. 
Our visit started with an introduction presentation of prof. Hannu Salovaara (professor of Cereal Technology since 1987) who is the head of the Food Technology division in the Department of Food and Environmental Sciences. He explained us the structure of the university and the focus areas of the current research, such as food quality and good nutrition, vital soil and clean environment, utilization of microbial resources and food production chains. Especially, the interest in gluten-free products (like bread) was underlined few times and perhaps will lead to some collaboration between the UoH and WUR.
It was interesting to hear that the stuff from UoH was planning to watch birds the next day. They gather in the morning around 7:00 to watch 30-40 different species of birds which are traveling through Helsinki further towards North. Unfortunately, we did not have time to join.  
We were really happy to see that so many people came to hear our presentations; every chair in the room was occupied. The research topics of PhD students from UoH are very close to ours so it was especially motivating to hear what they do and have discussions with them during coffee breaks.
Important to mention, Marta was a chairman of our mini-symposium and everything was going according to the schedule until we let Thomas present. He enjoyed the attention of the colleagues from UoH so much that he wouldn’t stop talking. That’s the spirit! The meeting was very interesting, all presenters did a great job  Jimmy talked about the traffic lights (green spots = alive cells; red dots = dead cells), Sami practiced his Finnish (Kiitos!), Abid smoothly avoided the questions referring to the project confidentiality, Jue accounted some technical problems with the pointer but managed to fix it, Jacqueline decided to teach foreigners how to pronounce her surname correct and Nicolas assured us that ‘it is worth to hydrolyze gluten not only because somebody gave money for it’.  

Marta presents prof. Salovaara and Vieno Pieronen with our famous Dutch stroopwafels

In the end of our stay in the university, we had a tour through the labs. We saw lots of facilities, for example the sensory lab which looks a lot like the labs in the Restaurant of the Future in Wageningen. No wonder, the collaboration between the both already exists! 
After leaving the UoH at 16:00 we went to the Mummins shop. We bought some souvenirs with the characters from the Finnish cartoon. So equipped we headed to the traditional Finnish restaurant (http://www.ravintolaaino.fi/en/frontpage/). The food was gorgeous! The grilled herring and the reindeer steak maybe did not cover even one-tenth of the plate but it sure was a heaven in our mouth, and little less heaven for our wallets. 
In the evening, some people were chatting in the kitchen while sipping a tea, others went to city for a drink and the rest was trying to catch some sleep knowing that we have another busy day ahead. 


PS. Today Kevin decided to lose some of his luggage. Why? Maybe it was a bit too heavy? Strangely, he started with losing his bank card, although it is rather light..He pushed it into a pin automat, which constantly dared to reject it but fortunately he was more stubborn than the machine and in the end it had to accept it! In return the mean daring machine refused to give it back. Ufff, luckily the gift for Kevin’s girlfriend was already safe in his bag.

It was a great day at the University of Helsinki