First, have a Belgian beer, but then get to work!

From left, Matthew, Polly, Rustin and Eugene try the local brew.

Today's blog comes from Eugene Yoon a senior in chemical and biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

Leuven is a very pretty college town with lots of trees and friendly people. The weather can be rather erratic as it was raining a lot for my first week here and now it is hitting the 30's (Celsius) in my third week.

Our group from Hopkins decided to celebrate our arrival on our second day after getting settled in with a nice dinner in the town square. Dinner in Belgium would not be complete without the delicious premier beer that the country is famous for. Matt and I sampled the tripel karmeliet because our waiter told us it was his favorite.

Like I said, the city itself is quite beautiful. A lot of it has forest-like areas with paths for biking and running, but once you get inside the city there are many majestic buildings as well. There is also the Oude Market which is essentially a strip of cafes and bars where many of the college kids like to hang out. It is also definitely going to be the place to be to watch the world cup games!

IMEC is one of the world's premier research institutions in micro and nanoelectronics. It was founded in 1985 as the interuniversity MICROelectronics center, so perhaps INEC might be a more fitting name in the 21st century? Anyways, on our first day we received a tour around the place by our host PhD student, Evelien Mathieu. We saw the "ballroom" which is a massive cleanroom which houses multimillion dollar equipment viewable through a glass wall.

The ballroom is this deep!

I am working with my supervisor and PhD student, Jordi Cools, on a project combining mutlielectrode arrays developed at IMEC and 3D self-folding microstructures from professor Gracias' lab. Although the P line (production line) equipment is state-of-the-art and can fabricate nano-scale structures, IMEC also has an experimental research section called the III-V lab.

I will probably spend a lot of time in the III-V since P line stuff is inacessible to me because it is for high throughput and standardized industry processes. There is much work to do and with that I will conclude this blog entry!

A weekend trip to Amsterdam

From Polly Ma from the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Read on.

Our first weekend at Leuven was a four-day weekend, so on Friday, I set off to Amsterdam with a few other students. We caught a bus from Brussels and the ride was about 3.5 hours long due to holiday traffic. When we arrived in Amsterdam, we checked into a little hostel. It was my first experience with hostels and completely different from anywhere I've ever stayed.

The Amsterdam crew!

Cruising on the Amsterdam canals

I shared a room with the three other students from Hopkins and our room had two sets of bunk beds. The room had one tiny bathroom and the entire floor had to share a shower. My first day in Amsterdam was spent getting oriented and getting to know our surroundings. At night, we went on a pubcrawl where we met people from Ireland, England, and France!

The next day, we found a small farmer's market a few blocks from our hostel. We had fresh-made crepes and fruit smoothies for breakfast. After breakfast, we went on a boat tour through the canals of Amsterdam, where we got to see some beautiful sights. The cruise was about 75 minutes long and a nice break from all the walking around. After the cruise, we walked around Vondelpark, a scenic park with people rollerskating and playing soccer and picnicking and just relaxing. In the evening, we visited the infamous Red Light District. The streets were so crowded with tourists that it was difficult to maneuver the streets.

In our final day in Amsterdam, we saw a bunch of different museums. In the morning, a few of us wanted to go to the Anne Frank House Museum, but there was a 2-hour wait, so we decided to go back later in the day when it was less crowded. Instead, we walked around the Jordaan neighborhood, which was quiet and filled with many cafes. There was also small cheese shop and museum that had tons of free samples, so we spent a half hour in there, learning about different cheese types.

Homemade granola sold at the farmer's market

In the afternoon, we made our way to the Van Gogh Museum, that features the works of Van Gogh and Felix Vallotton. After that, we went back to the Anne Frank House and the wait then was only 45 minutes. Walking through the house was incredible and extremely somber, and it was definitely worth the wait.

At the end of the day, we caught a bus home, missed our train, took 3 other different trains, and finally made it back to Leuven in one piece. It was an exciting first weekend, but my real work at imec started on Monday, which I'll talk about more next time!

 

Photos courtesy Polly Ma.