Acknowledgements 204 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS “Laboring five years to write a book that most readers will pick up to flip straight to the acknowledgements, is an excellent exercise in modesty” - Josje Kok, 2021 I have been told that this section is often the most-read part of any thesis. So if this is the first time you read the words ‘Extracellular Vesicle’ and ‘Imaging Flow Cytometry’: please go back to the beginning and actually read this thesis. Chances are you will like it, and – who knows – you might learn a thing or two. With that out of the way, I would like to dedicate this section to the many people who have in some form contributed to my PhD-trajectory. As every sentence written during these last five years has been scrutinized, structured, debated, changed, and re-written - I here refuse to do any of that. I have, however, roughly organized this section into three parts. Although many of you cannot (and should not ever) be placed into a single category, my (scientific) inclination for order and cataloguing is near compulsive – leaving me no other options ☺. “I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve” – John. R. R. Tolkien, 1954 Dear Prof. dr. Carla C. Baan, thank you for giving me the opportunity to perform my PhD studies at the Rotterdam Transplantation Lab, for seeing the potential in the (early) ImageStream experiments conducted at Sanquin (Amsterdam), for acquiring our own IFCM at the Transplantation Laboratory, and for your critical approach and comments to all the experiments and writing performed. You allowed me the freedom to ‘play’ at the lab (although, as scientists we prefer to say ‘test’), made sure I did not lose oversight of the bigger picture (the completion of this thesis), and taught me to take my time during presentations (I have the tendency to speed-up in my enthusiasm). Dear Dr. ir. Karin Boer, thank you for being there all along the way, for all the chats (both work and non-work related), for nourishing my enthusiasm when an experiments’ outcome was in line with expectations (and for motivating me when it wasn’t), and for helping me organize my thoughts on paper. Although I ‘derailed’ my own project – away from a biomarkers’ perspective, and into a more technical approach – you managed to keep up and be as excited as I was when we found/saw something new. Keep speaking your mind and be direct, it is your greatest gift ☺.
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