Topic: Science

No other organ has excited the interest of scientists and philosophers as much as the brain. The long history of the brain research passed through many stages with different beliefs and views on what brain actually is, how it looks like, and how it works. The brain is at present understood as a biological computer, which operates and controls the whole body and the processes within. The brain research still attracts enormous attention. Desire to construct a computer with the capabilities of the human brain is strongly accented. Other research aims at brain pathophysiology and understanding of a mechanism of various nervous tissue related diseases. The latter takes the advantage of different imaging and scanning techniques which are capable to display distinct physiological and anatomical features of the brain.

I am officially an idealist. I know it and I am not giving this up. I have heard many times "The sooner you lose the illusions about (your) life the better." And I would always shout out loud in disagreement! Yes, being an idealist sometimes fucking hurts… But it also offers infinite Joy & Love & Enthusiasm. No matter how hard you get kicked one day, you can fly the other. And that’s worth all the possible pain or disappointment!

The first version of the following text was actually created quite shortly after my arrival from the Mass Spectrometry School in Italy in September. It took me, however, another a few weeks to tweak it for the blog. Lack of time for nothing else but the research in the past month lead to a significant blogging deficit. Anyway, sit down and relax, the first load of summarized FAQs about Mass Spectrometry Imaging is about to knock ur socks off :)

I am currently working at the AMOLF Institute in Amsterdam. AMOLF is partly financed by FOM (Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter), a Dutch organization that "promotes, co-ordinates and finances fundamental physics research in the Netherlands". As a new PhD student I took part in a course named "Taking Charge of Your PhD project", which is compulsory for all PhD-student fellows and is paid for by FOM. The following text summarizes the two-day course & my interpretation of the take home messages.

Back from Italy to the reality of mornings foggy Amsterdam... This time maybe a bit untraditional piece of text about the 1st IMSS that was held in Siena from 15th to 20th September. The school was organized by the International Mass Spectrometry Foundation and the Italian Chemical Society.

Dubrovnik is a wonderful place! Finally we can confirm that. Finally, after several months of listening to fabulous comments on this Croatian city, all made by our boss every now and then. He visited Dubrovnik couple of times during the past years, the purpose of his visit being always the same: the summer school on Mass Spectrometry in Biotechnology and Medicine. Its seventh edition took place this year and it was my greatest pleasure to participate on it.

That is a random selection of some of the words that accompany me during my first spring in Amsterdam and at AMOLF. I spent two weeks in the Czech Republic earlier during April. I managed to visit the Faculty of Pharmacy in Hradec Kralove and to make all the arrangements necessary for the final moving to The Netherlands. I met also many of my friends, which was highly appreciated. Additionally I took part in a two-day course on MATLAB programming. Why? Let me explain in the following article.

Alright, welcome at the second and simultaneously final part of the report on COST workshop, which took place in Vienna first week in February. I will save your time and simply skip any lengthy boring recapitulation by beginning where I stopped in the previous post. That is on Friday morning. (Jackson should get some inspiration here, as it is not polite to let the audience wait for the next part for a long time...)

I was back at AMOLF’s labs for only one full week after getting back from Switzerland when on Tuesday evening (5th Feb) I was packing my suitcase for yet another trip. I was invited to give a small talk on my STSM on a COST workshop, taking place at Technische Universität Wien in Vienna, Austria. 
 

It's been a while since I got back from Novartis campus. In previous posts I was writing about the scientific mission, its purposes and its course. After this experience, I can compare Academia, research Institute and Pharmaceutical company approaches to the research and science. However, it has to be emphasized, that in the following article I am comparing the Czech Academia, Dutch Institute and Swiss company, as the national background has a huge impact on the final working feelings. So here we go: Charles University, AMOLF and Novartis.