This Friday I enjoyed the privilege of being a Phd. examiner for the first time. The (un)fortunate individual was Ari Jon Arason, who has been working on the functional role of human bronchial derived basal cells in regeneration and fibrosis within the Faculty of medicine.

Emma Rawlins from the Gurdon Institute was the other examiner, and she did a marvelous job. She works in the field of stem cell biology and has a fabulously interesting paper on biophysical model of basal stem cell populations (Watson JK, Rulands S, Wilkinson AC, Wuidart A, Ousset M, Van Keymeulen A, Gottgens B, Blanpain C, Simons BD and Rawlins EL (2015) Clonal Dynamics Reveal Two Distinct Populations of Basal Cells in Slow Turnover Airway Epithelium. Cell Reports 12, 1-12)

After her questions all I could ask about was evolution of lungs, and stem cells and variation in lung structures between individuals, and transcription factor isoforms of course. All in all this was an enjoyable experience. The work was well executed and interesting, his thesis was a good read and corduroy gowns a lot less awful than I imagined. For some reason the University of Iceland has adopted very formal guidelines for PhD. defenses, involving gowns, parading and verbose introductions and declarations. At least the Rector does not have to sip champagne with every new Phd, as the earlier guidelines stipulated.