Working with the people at IMEC

From Monday through Friday, I went to work at IMEC. The people there were very welcoming. I took a tour of the labs where I would be working and had meetings with several collaborators or potential collaborators. On my second day at IMEC, I gave a presentation presenting an overview of the research in the Konstantopoulos lab. I ate lunch each day with members of Dr. Lagae's lab in the IMEC cafeteria.

Anytime lunch ends and someone from the group says, "Shall we go for a coffee?”, I know I'm in my kind of place. I enjoy a good cup of coffee. Suffice it to say, I greatly enjoyed my time at IMEC. One of Dr. Lagae’s lab members had Nicolas and me over for dinner one night. A home cooked meal tasted great after eating too many fried treats, and it was interesting to talk about life in Belgium and the U.S.

I greatly enjoyed the innovative and collaborative environment at IMEC. The passion displayed by the researchers in their quest to develop market-ready products to enhance human health was inspiring. It was a great atmosphere to think about potential projects that would combine the skills of Hopkins and IMEC to create tests to better understand and eventually stop the spread of cancer. I had the opportunity to meet with graduate students, post docs, and PIs, and I feel like I got a good overview of the technologies being developed at IMEC.

More later...

Blog post by Colin Paul