Series: My Journey to PhD

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.

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.

The first international conference on Mass Spectrometry Imaging took place in Ourense (one of four regions of Galicia, Spain) between 3rd and 5th September and was named OurCon 2012. I took part mostly for the reason to learn about Mass Spectrometry Imaging, as this will be the core technique during my upcoming stay at FOM-Institute AMOLF in Amsterdam.