Meet Kata: From Finland to Pharma and Back to Academia

Lets meet Kata! This episode was created for the purpose of the Haapaniemi lab website (https://haapaniemilab.org/). Kick back, relax, and let the waves of wisdom wash over you in this podcast episode – where learning meets laughter, and knowledge is served with a side of chill vibes.

Embark on a captivating voyage through the scientific realm with Kata, a tenacious PhD student from Emma's Lab, who's on the brink of concluding her intensive research journey. From her beginnings in Finland to mastering her craft at KI in Sweden, and venturing into the pharmaceutical industry with Novartis, Kata's narrative is a tapestry of pivotal choices leading her back to academia. She unravels the contrasts between the fast-paced industry life and the creative expanse of academic pursuits, shedding light on the passionate commitment required to innovate within the world of T-cells and gene therapy.

All music clips were used from the song "Jukka Tukka" after agreement with amazing band and friends 2+1 Jam band.
This podcast episode was created under the technical and official support of University of Oslo, Norway.

Transcript

Katariina: 0:07

Musi. My name is Kata and I am a PhD student at Emma's Lab, now hopefully getting towards the end of my PhD, and I am a scientist who is working with T-cells and quite excited about that stuff. And yeah, that's me in a nutshell. So I did my undergrad in Finland and wanted to have a sense of adventure, so I moved to Sweden to do my masters at KI and then after the masters I wanted some time to think about if a PhD is the right choice for me or not. And then I went to the pharma industry and worked at Novartis for a couple of years and then finally concluded that yes, it's a good idea to do the PhD. So took a little time and now I'm here.

Katariina: 1:18

I think there's quite a few differences between these two and actually I like both academia and industry, so I'm not anti-either. I think the industry sometimes feels a little bit more dynamic and you might see the impact of your work or that there's a reminder of this a little bit more often, that you're actually pushing a drug into the clinic. But then in academia there's more freedom and I see a lot of creativity that is sometimes a little bit more difficult to show in the industry. So I think the academia is where a lot of the hardcore innovation is coming from. So I like both parts. Yeah, with freedom also comes the responsibility, but all in all, I think there are these differences between both and it's sort of up to you, which is something that you want to choose for yourself.

Katariina: 2:18

Well, this lab was at the very starting stage when I started and for me, I wanted to get both the degree, so I wanted to have the PhD for my future employment options as well as the scientific journey for developing my skills further, and I think the gene therapy was something very interesting to me. I had worked briefly with CRISPR before that, in a very simplistic setting, and I thought that this is a very interesting method and it has a lot of translational value, and I think I'm a translational scientist, so I always think about what goes into the clinic eventually. So I think CRISPR for me was sort of like a tool to get to the translational stuff, but I don't see myself as a hardcore CRISPR like it only has to be. It only has to be CRISPR. I think that I will end up doing quite a lot of things in my career.

Katariina: 3:15

I've been thinking about this question a lot because I have a hard time remembering little Kata, but I think that I've always been very curious and I've always asked a lot of questions about things and I've been quite stubborn already as a kid and I think the science came in later, maybe closer to high school, when I thought that these are fundamentally interesting questions. But I think what she has in common with the present day Kata is this curiosity and what is this thing? And being sort of amazed at nature and what comes out of it. I mean, because this CRISPR is also related to what we found from nature. I think it's really great. I mean, science is collective, like the way that we learn, Like I am now doing a PhD, but I was taught by many people before me teachers and mentors and supervisors and so I think that there is a degree of responsibility that we have for these new, fresh minds coming in. And in addition to the responsibility, I have really liked it, like in my PhD I have had one student who I supervised and the project was really great and I had a great time supervising and but I also take this quite seriously. I mean you can, you can have an impact on somebody's career, like in the best and I think that in my journey with that student, like it was a really beautiful journey, but there is also, if you don't take it seriously, then then you can make things a little bit difficult for the students. So I think it comes with this sense of responsibility, but I do love it and I do recommend it for the people who feel like they have the time.

Katariina: 5:03

Yeah, I have quite a lot of growing interests. I mean, as I mentioned, I love nature. So, in addition to science, you stuff, I love hiking and spending time in nature and kind of observing different, different things happening. And I also enjoy traveling, although now with I'm trying to reduce my my flight, flight and carbon footprint and all of that stuff. But like seeing, seeing a new place is, even if it's a little bit outside of Oslo, I'm already very, very excited about that. And and then I do quite a bit of reading and I have these obsessions of the months when I'm like investing, investing my time into obsessing about something that is usually completely unrelated to my work, some kind of phenomenon that I quite like to educate myself about certain things. And yeah, our artsy, creative stuff. I've always, always into how we can express ourselves in the world. Y,