Journeys of an Experimental Philosopher

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.

I would like to thank to the readers of Karolina's Journey for kind favour in 2012. You could read travelling posts and articles about science. This year I wrote articles from home, Spain, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland and the Netherlands. I am staying in Amsterdam for some time longer, so more Holland posts are coming. I should also remind the 11th place for Karolina's Journey in the international contest for exchange students blogs, which took place at the beginning of February. I can't wait the upcoming year, which will be adventurous again, no doubt about it. You are allways welcome to read about it on my blog!

My Short Term Scientific Mission (STSM) was held for two weeks on the Novartis Campus in Basel, Switzerland. I was working in the Mass spectrometric imaging group of Markus Stoeckli; my practical supervisors were Dieter Staab and Gregory Morandi. I visited the campus for two main reasons; I wanted to learn the quantification in mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) and I wanted to explore research lab in a pharmaceutical company.

I am again on my way. This time on the boarder of France and Switzerland. I will spend two weeks in the research lab of Markus Stoeckli in Novartis. The stay has been planned since the conference in Spain and after couple of months the right time for another travelling came. I will be working in Switzerland but thank to my mum’s cousin, I am staying in his flat across the boarders in St. Louis, France.

Recently I reported about COST supported course on the basics of Mass Spectrometry Imaging (MSI) that took place in Amsterdam at FOM-Institute AMOLF. At the end of October was organized a course for intermediate users of MSI in Bio Medical Center (BMC) of Lund University in Sweden. I took part together with two colleagues of mine from AMOLF and here I bring a summarizing report on the course. 

"COST is an intergovernmental framework for European Cooperation in Science and Technology, allowing the coordination of nationally-funded research on a European level." "COST enables break-through scientific developments leading to new concepts and products and thereby contributes to strengthen Europe’s research and innovation capacities." These are words form the official website www.cost.eu.

I will spend the following six months in the FOM-Institute AMOLF. I learned about the institute thanks to a friend of mine, who recommended it to me together with couple of more places within Europe as an ideal place for doing a mass spectrometry related internship. I went through the information on the website and subsequently decided to e-mail to professor Ron Heeren and ask him about the possibilities of an internship in his group. I had no idea it would be so easy, actually.

The International Mass Spectrometry Conference (IMSC) has been organized once in three years since 1958. Last IMSC in 2009 took place in Bremen, Germany. 2012 was a special year for IMSC, as is was localized out of Europe for the first time: in Kyoto, Japan. The opening ceremony on Sunday 16th September was followed by four and a half day of exquisite mass spectrometric programme.

19th International Mass Spectrometry Conference was about to be started on Sunday 16th September. The opening ceremony was scheduled for half pas three in the afternoon. We decided to take the advantage of morning time to see another nice place in Kyoto.

The journey to Japan took us basically one whole day. We set off from Ruzyně airport in Prague at 9 a.m. (Thursday 13th Sep), at Amsterdam-Schiphol we changed for a boeing to Ósaka and lend there at 9 a.m. again (Friday 14th Sep). However, we added seven hours on our watches, so the travelling itself took 16 hours. From Ósaka we moved on to Kyóto by train.