Research Stay of Nils Lukat

From mid of April to end of June, I did my external research stay in Adelaide. Here I visited the NanoBioEngineering group of Benjamin Thierry at the Future Industries Institute at the University of South Australia in Adelaide. The group is interdisciplinary and focusses on the development and implementation of novel cancer biodiagnostic and prognostic technologies. There is a lot of work going on dealing with nanoparticles and microfluidic devices. In both areas I learned useful things for my work in the CRC 1261. I really enjoyed my stay in this group of nice people from all over the world. Everybody was extremely helpful and open-minded. Besides this, I really liked the meetings with Benjamin, which were very inspiring. Sometimes I missed having lunch together with the group but this was compensated with several after work activities with the whole group and single group members. During my last week in Australia I visited the Nanomedicine Conference in Sydney. A nice experience with many interesting talks about nanoparticles in biological applications and biosensors. In Adelaide I lived most of the time in a very nice AirBnB Apartment. My hosts were from Vietnam and I had the possibility to taste many new flavours and spices. In the first month the weather was very nice. On my first weekend in Australia my hosts took me to the beach where we collected a lot of clams. Towards the end of my stay the weather was getting colder every day like it is usual in autumn downunder. This was the time were all the fruits in the beautiful garden were ripe and it was possible to have a glass of self-made orange juice in the morning. The only drawback was that the orange juice was nearly frozen since it was close to one degree. Briefly I would recommend everybody to go to Australia but If you will ever travel to South Australia during the summer in Europe pack your warm stuff since it is freezing cold – even inside the houses. I would like to thank the DFG for funding this research stay through CRC 1261.

Nils Lukat