Six degrees to Kevin Bacon is a concept that says everybody is connected to everybody through a string of five people. It started with Kevin Bacon who at some point said he had worked with more or less everybody in Hollywood, or somebody who worked with them. A similar concept exists in mathematical science, where researchers can calculate the shortest path of collaboration to Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdös.

My Paul Erdös number is four, by the way. Since last week, my Obama number is two. Eric Lander, director of Broad, was named as one of Obama’s scientific advisors. I had lunch with Eric on multiple occasions and he remembered my name, so I can say he knows me. Crazy shit that I have a common contact with Obama! I know this sounds like showing off (and it is, really) but I am truly impressed by the pace of the new administration and their choice for change. Science has suffered severely from the Bush administration, both by restrictions and financially. Obama has promised to double funding for cancer research in the coming years, and with Eric as one of his top advisors that is a promise he is likely to keep!

Last week was one of the most exciting weeks since I have been here. On Tuesday I flew to Washington for another TCGA project meeting. TCGA is my main research project. It involves a lot of important academic research institutes all across the country. On Wednesday I gave a talk about the stuff me and my collaborators have done for this project. I was a bit nervous, but I have done the same talk several times now and I think it went pretty well.

Our manuscript, that describes the same stuff as I showed in my presentation, had been circulated the week before. Fortunately, we got a lot of positive comments on both talk and paper. And FINALLY on Friday, we submitted our manuscript to one of the major scientific journals! The manuscript will now be reviewed by journal editor and reviewers and hopefully eventually accepted, but it will take anywhere between three and nine months before it is published. Still, this submission is a major highlight of my postdoc.
On Fridaynight some friends and I drove to Sunday River in Maine, for the first skiing action of the season. Although I only started skiing two years ago, it was great to be on the slopes again. Good conditions and reasonable quiet trails. A lot of Santas on Sunday. And currently I am working hard to finish off the year - I fly home next Tuesday. Life is good