Dear all,
10 years ago I started my journey at the University of Turku, or 12 years ago in Aalto University (TKK, Teknillinen Korkeakoulu back then). I stepped into Turku Centre of Biotechnology as a summer intern in 2008 before my Bachelor's, without knowing much of anything, and I was handed over ChIP-seq data and so I became a "data scientist" (without even realizing it). I had no idea what is science (really), how it is done, what people in science are like, and I was frankly quite puzzled. Suddenly my project turned into a Bachelor's thesis at TKK and my first scientific paper, which is still probably my most cited publication. After a series of events I found myself a "PhD student" in 2013.
On Friday we got to celebrate the academic milestone that I now got the right to the title of a PhD after defending my thesis of applying mathematical modeling, statistics, and machine learning in prostate cancer. I hate titles to be frank, but I do value the ever-dripping hourglass of time and events that have come my way. The true meaning of PhD is not so much of the destination (a fancy title and/or "prestige" - I still smell as much of fart and sweat as before obtaining such a title), but rather much more about the journey. I am but a small man, but I dream that some day, somewhere, some patient undergoing a lethal disease will receive better treatment or advice because of something that might've been derived from my work. If there is even one such occurrence, this has been worth it - all else is dust in the wind. This journey is now at an interesting junction thanks to many colleagues (many of whom I am *extremely* happy to also call friends), hard work, mixture of success and failure, a good pinch of curiosity, something of a strange brew of luck and skill, sleepless nights, and special people like Essi without whom this wouldn't have been possible.
I tried to invite as many of you as possible to join me in the celebration, as it has luckily not been a hermit's journey. Thank you to all of you present and also absent, who brought meaning to this task. There were over 80 of you at the defense and over 60 at the Karonkka (the evening party; roughly translates to "Coronation" or "Crowning" in English), but I haven't forgotten the ones who couldn't make it in person.
I don't know where the winds will take me or those that are my companions in life. The following is Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken", which can be (mis)interpreted in many ways. I would say to me it's of the paths we take; looking back questioning our ways and choices, but with a glance to the future acknowledging that whether the road was the better or the worse, it was the path chosen in this gracefully granted sole life that we travel:
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."
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