Reet – the dancing adventurer

  • Published: 9 March 2022
Reet Link is a woman who colleagues call a superwoman. She is super fast, sharp and has an answer to a question you haven't even asked. In addition, she is always cheerful and smiling. Now the time has finally come to get to know her better.

When Reet was a child, she liked all kinds of sports events and climbing on top of trees. With nostalgia she remembers that feeling of freedom when her main job was simply playing. Her least favorite activity was having to take a nap during lunch, which she now really misses.

Her mother has had a big impact on her, because they have been close all their life. From her mother Reet learned that the best medicine for the soul is walking in the woods. While in nature she learned to respect it and to analyze the feelings of other living beings. In her opinion her mother is one of the most determined people, who always tries to see the positive even in difficult situations - an example Reet has tried to follow in her own life as well.

Her most memorable memories are also related to her family and the summer days they spent at Ridali Airfield. Her parents were gliders, which gave her the opportunity to be in the middle of the exciting world of technology at an early age. Reet remembers watching the lazily rowing clouds and gracefully gliding gliders while lying on her back on the meadow. On windy days, she climbed on top of the observation tower and flew homemade kites from the balcony. She also liked to play drivers with her brother, because there was a big car cemetery next to the airfield. On other days they rode their bikes to the lake, went swimming and bought ice cream from the village shop. In the evenings the gliders gathered around the campfire to exchange impressions while all the children got to play there together and listen to their happy talk.

On her first school day Reet felt quite anxious, because she hadn’t gone to kindergarten. Although she quickly learned that, as with most things, it seemed a lot scarier than it really was. Since she enjoyed solving tasks at home, she hoped to do that at school as well. Reet also wanted to find many new friends to play with and she didn’t have to be disappointed.

After high school she wanted to go and study choreography in Tallinn or Viljandi, but love brought her to Tartu and the lottery wheel fell on chemistry. She decided to give chemistry a year to prove itself. However, it smoothly turned into almost ten years and three diplomas.

At the end of the first year at the university Reet ended up in a physical chemistry research group, but it didn’t give her any joy of recognition. Fortunately, she heard from her coursemate that there is an exciting group that studies chemical reactions in humans. She knew right away that this was something for her. Her professor still laughs that at first Reet was worried she would be thrown out of the group if she wasn’t good enough. What happened, however, was that she stayed in the same group until the end of her doctorate. During that time she wrote three dissertations on the signaling of the melanocortin receptor, which controls nutrition and sexual function.

Her most memorable university years were during the making of her bachelor’s degree, when learning was mixed with a busy social life. They had such a nice custom with the course that when going out together they always had to put arms in a circle and shout "chemistry" on three. One such great evening was followed by the most difficult titration of her life. Luckily, there was a supportive coursemate who helped her write down three quite deviating results. Thanks to the instructor's grace she passed without having to repeat the experiment.

In addition, she also remembers those long experiments for her dissertation, which often lasted into the night. One of the most nerve-wracking experiences was when she was chosen to present these results to two hundred people at an international conference on neurochemistry. With great gratitude, she also recalls other exciting practical trainings abroad, where she was able to improve her studies as a doctoral student.

Most useful things Reet learned as a university student, which still help her in her everyday work, are learning to plan experiments and not take failed experiments to heart, because sometimes it can be more informative. Her most exciting results began with an experiment where she used a wrong reagent and the phenomenon she discovered as a result. She knows now how important it is to write everything down, because a week later no one remembers anything. She also learned not to be afraid of machines, to instruct students and, above all, to love biochemistry.
After all that Reet made it to Solis BioDyne through a recommendation from a friend. It came to her at exactly the right time because she was looking for another challenge in her life at that moment.



She enjoyed the brain teaser exercises that were sent to her before the job interview at Solis BioDyne and remembers how amazed everyone was by her thorough answers during the interview. She also recalls the lab tour where she noticed a lot of exciting machines that she could play with. When it came to deciding whether she would like to work at Solis BioDyne or not, she thought calmly about it, but in the end, there was no doubt. In addition to exciting projects, a supportive team is very important to Reet and the people of Solis BioDyne are very warm, open and helpful.

Now Reet has been working as a developer at Solis BioDyne for almost a year. During this time, she has been able to work on so many projects and participate in two in-service trainings. In addition to product development, she has also been able to develop quality control methods and automate the production line. Since she still had a lot of will left after that, she was initially given the task of being responsible for the machine park. By now, she has passed on these skills to our good new technician.

Reet’s biggest challenge at Solis BioDyne has so far been the development of a freeze-drying method that allows our PCR mixtures to be reconstituted so that customers can lyophilize them and integrate them with their own primers and probes. This has the advantage of extended product life and simplified transport.

When asked about Reet’s biggest achievements, she lists graduating with a doctorate while working, hiking for 11 days on the 170 km long Tour du Mont Blanc route, performing a whole dance performance with a sprained leg because she played a leading role and couldn’t let others down. She also tried the profession of a street performer while traveling in Greece.


While Reet is all grown up now, she hasn’t given up her childhood love of sports and still plays badminton during her free time. Recently she has also been enjoying playing the drums.

Unfortunately, she doesn’t have a lot of time to see her friends since most of them live in another city nor does she have enough time for her biggest passion – dancing. If Reet had more time, she would come up with dance choreography, go on a month-long hike to Camino de Santiago, build a house and take a dog. Sometime in the future she would like to successfully overcome new professional challenges, learn to sing, play in a band, and create her own dance group.

With this many ideas and plans we are very lucky to have Reet in our team and her positivity and willpower motivating everyone to do their best.