looooong summer in incredible Woods Hole, MA, USA

It's been long time since my last post, which is related to the fact that I normally write posts about my trips to different places, and well, I did not leave Bangalore for 6 months, because I was too busy with my research. And now, it is also my research which is the reason that I can write again about a trip to another place. To make it short, my boss Jitu was again invited to give a course in the physiology course of the Marine Biology Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, MA, USA, and I accompanied him as his teaching assistant together with my colleague Joey.
It is the second year for us to be part of the physiology course (last year, I went there from San Francisco), and we were already excited about another two weeks of workshop, but in addition we were also invited to participate at a newly created summer institute at the MBL, where we could pursue our own research projects for a couple of weeks. Like that, my stay in Woods Hole went for a total of six weeks!

The preparations for the trip to Woods Hole started already months before the course and it was helpful that we had the experience form last year's physiology course, but we still got a nice surprise: shipping of frozen reagents from India to US became a real pain. There are specialized agencies which deal with the custom services to get a pre-clearance before we send our frozen reagents on dry ice, but this time, there were some changes in both Indian and USA customs regulations just a week before we wanted to ship our stuff. Thus, the whole procedure got delayed, and we had to start the course without a part of our 'special' material which arrived about a week later. Because my whole project relied on such reagents, I had to improvise a bit and was happy that there were some leftovers from last year's course in the -80C freezer, which were still functional.

Anyhow, the course started, and I was lucky to have a lovely group of four 'students' (two post docs and two grad students in their final year). The group dynamics was very different from my last year's experience.
This time, they did a real group work, prepared together the samples and helped each other extensively, instead of a split up in subgroups after the general introduction. it is true that we could explore less different phenomena like this, but to have such a group work intensified the learning experience, because all four discussed about the experiments to do and were not hesitating to ask me questions.
After the first week, which went on relatively calm, work started to get interesting once, my proteins from India arrived. Woods Hole magic came in with many exciting nights at the microscope until 3-4 a.m accompanied with music, beer and good vibes. It was fantastic to see the whole system working for the first time after more than a year of preparations and to to observe its interesting behavior. This feeling should stay on for the following 5 weeks.  

here the link to the album

At the end of the two weeks, we had the obligatory presentations of the modules, followed by some game time: we had a softball practice and to my happy surprise there was a group of people from different courses playing football. in the evening, we had our first party, which went on very nicely, but came to a sudden halt when the security guard showed up at 1.30am and ordered to leave the place. This was the sad start of a series of confrontation with the house rules. It seems that the new presidency of the MBL courses insisted in a stricter following of the rules regarding the consumption of beer and music, which was totally different from the previous decades, and which totally changed the Woods Hole experience. Instead of late night
hang outs in the lab (as mentioned above), consumption of alcoholic beverages was forbidden for a few days, and later only allowed in the break room from 7-11pm. Parties were not allowed for some while neither.
I hope that the future courses will have again more luck with the MBL director, because one of the essentials of Woods Hole were theses special nights, where you continue your science in a more playful way to really explore things and let your mind go wild while discussing with your colleagues.

here the link to the album

Anyhow, personally, I was not too much affected by all this, because Jitu, Joey and me shifted after the first two weeks to the summer institute, located in another building on the MBL campus. Here we shifted gears, after two weeks of teaching we were supposed to do research our-self on the highest level possible. The settings were ideal, the summer institute consisted of six professors (Ron Vale, Michael Rosen, Daniel Fletcher, Jim Wilhelm, Jack Taunton and Satyajit Mayor) and about twice as many post docs and grad students (the working force). We all worked in vitro on membrane related questions, and the aim of
this institute was to foster collaborations. And it worked fantastic, it was great to see, how the different people started to combine their assays to create more complex systems. And as a bonus to this, some of the professors also engaged and started to do experiments. It was a great feeling when Jitu prepared under my guidance his own in vitro and to see that it worked!
The four weeks of Summer Institute were a real boost for my research and I was very happy that I could be part of such a great endeavor.

the working hands at the Summer Institute

But this should be more than enough writing about science, it will become too boring and there was also some time to do other things. After the two exhausting weeks of the physiology course, I had the pleasure to be free for a few days. Just before Independence day, I drove via Bus to New York, where I met up with some good friends, and where I wandered through the city on July 4th.

one world trade center, New York

meeting with friends from Paris

From there, I continued my trip to Frankfurt, Germany, to attend a wedding of a very good friend from my time in Paris. The celebration happened in lovely Rhein-Hessen region, a great place for wine with beautiful landscape and hearty people. In addition, the weather was just perfect so that I could fully enjoy the weekend with some of my closest friends.

The church in Worms founded in 1010

Back in Woods Hole, the summer institute allowed us to organize the day more flexible, so that there was always some time to either go for a run or for a swim in the sea. on the weekends, we made sometimes use of our bicycles to get to Falmouth, a larger village, about 7 miles away, with some nice shops and coffee places. I think twice or thrice, we managed to cook at our cottage, which was big fun and was a nice change from the daily canteen food.
A great happening was the arrival of the dance company Black Label Movement (BLM) from Minnesota. This time, I had more time to interact with them and to participate on some of their training/body-storming sessions. Their performance was stunning and a great example of the possibilities of modern dance.

On one of the last weekends, Ulrike and Philipp, who live in Boston now, visited me in Woods Hole. We had a nice relaxing day on the beach, playing some soccer and saw how coffee is roasted in the bakery 'Pie in the Sky'. The following day, we all drove back to Boston, where I met a few other friends (from Paris and San Francisco). This trip gave me the necessary energy boost to power through the last week of Woods Hole, which finished with a great party with the physiology course.

Now it goes back to Bangalore, but with a one week stop-over in Berlin...my beloved home town!