Experiments

Busy is good, right? Well, this week was busy! In back to back half hour meetings over two days I met with all of my collaborator's students (in Gent) to learn about their research projects. I also took the opportunity to learn about similarities and differences in our educational and research-funding systems. First of all, nearly all PhD students in Belgium have completed a MS-thesis in an engineering field. Doctorates are expected to take 4 years beyond that. They do not include coursework and are often fully funded by the government. So, quite a lot of work gets done, actually. The students I spoke with said they're the highest paid graduate students in Europe. Nice, eh? I don't have confirmation of that but they seemed pretty content. It was fun and interesting to hear about all the different sorts of projects going on. That was all day Tuesday and Thursday.

Monday, Wednesday and Friday I worked with my other collaborator -- the one in Brussels. Monday I got the quick tour of the medical school at Erasme Hopital and then we drove up to the Hopital Militaire in the very north of the city to observe the set up of experiments in a hypobaric chamber. The goal is/was to determine the effects of a drug on the response to exercise in hypoxia. I said I'd come back Wednesday to observe, but when I did, I got strong-armed into participating! (See slideshow). At least it was interesting. I got a pretty solid headache in the chamber (we went to the equivalent of 14,000 ft) but when we returned to sea level it wasn't so bad. I did the same on Friday, at which point the headache was worse, plus I suffered some visual disturbances afterwards, but I'm 100% now. What we do in the name of science.