Another PhD!

This is a picture of my friend Theresa and me. Before I introduce her, please look at my eyes - no more redness! There are less than three days in between the peak of the conjuntivitis and the present photograph. Yay for the doctors at Rush!
But now back to the important part. Theresa began this day as Ms. Feltes, and she ends it as Dr. Feltes! Congratulations to her with all my heart! She successfully defended her dissertation and will soon be officially bestowed upon the academic degree of Doctor of Philosophy, but actually in Chemical Engineering. Some of her experiments were done in the same room where I currently do mine - if you care about going back and looking for yourself, see photos here and here; the blue chair in the background was occasionally hers.
As much as I am sad about her departure for the next stage in her career (postdoc), I am happy for her, because I am enjoying the exact same experience right now. Good luck to you, Theresa, you will be greatly missed!

Conjunctivitis

I am usually a pretty healthy person, with no persistent problems. However, I have been recently haunted by a strong cold, which kept me away from work for half a week. Earlier on this week, the infection apparently resurfaced to have a rematch with me, this time affecting my eyes (see photo). As I was later told by a doctor, the symptoms are those of a conjunctivitis. I thought so myself, as I have had some before, but I didn't know the English term for what Germans call Bindehautentzündung. Yet it became apparent to me that the two must be the same: a (con)junction is something that binds several items together; hence the first part of the German disease. Haut means skin, referring to the membrane that the conjunctiva is. Finally, Entzündung means inflammation, indicated by the suffix -itis.
I have outlined before that such language geekiness is one of my pet pass times, and I thought after all the emphasis on potential transatlantic divisions it is nice that despite the Germans using a Germanic descriptor and the Anglophones a Greek one, the described concept is the same in both languages: a little piece of skin that connects two other parts of the eye is burning. I can find true delight in such parallelism, even if I am the one with the red eyes ... only five months shy of Halloween!