Tiam Mana Saffari

281 APPENDICES A Dear Dr. Bishop , thank you for giving me the opportunity to work in the lab. Your critical questions improved our work tremendously and I am grateful to have learned from you. The Christmas tree decorating event at your home during Thanksgiving gave us the ultimate Christmas feeling in Rochester. It is unbelievable how you find time to be a musician, pilot and coffee expert besides being a great surgeon and researcher. I will be the first in line when the orchestra comes to the Netherlands! Graag wil ik de leden van de leescommissie bedanken voor de interesse in mijn proefschrift. Prof dr. Bartels , Prof. dr. Malessy en Dr. Ruigrok , dank voor het commentaar wat jullie hebben gegeven. Dr. van Alfen , Prof. dr. Ritt en Dr. de Ruiter , hartelijk dank dat u bereid bent zitting te nemen in de promotiecommissie: het is een eer dat jullie onderdeel willen zijn van mijn promotie en ik kijk ernaar uit met u allen van gedachten te mogen wisselen. Dear Pat , thank you for welcoming me in the lab. You have taught me all there is to know about rats. Because of your help I felt comfortable to handle the rats and perform the surgeries. I truly enjoyed our small talk in the lab during and in between work! I had the pleasure to work with many colleagues of the van Wijnen laboratory . Thank you for your valuable time to help me during my research fellowship at Mayo. In particular, I wish to thank Roman , Leila , Amr and Marina . Your help and advice was invaluable. Dear Dr. van Wijnen , I have benefited from collaboration and many great discussions with you. The stem cell projects were not possible without your lab and your knowledge of gene expression is just incredible. Thank you for your continuous support. Dear Bill Anding , Eric Sheahan , Mayo Clinic X-ray Imaging Core , LouAnn Gross , Vivian Negron , Peggy Gosse Rahnenfuehrer and the Pathology Research Core team , Abbie Kaehler and her entire team, thank you for your hard work and contributions to this PhD thesis. Dear Jim Postier , your medical artwork has elevated the papers of this thesis tremendously. After seeing your first images for the SIEF technique, I knew that I wanted to ask your help to design the cover of my thesis. I had the idea of the hand in