Leipzig Post-Doctoral Fellow in Nashville / Vanderbilt University
by Stephan Theisgen (Post Doc at Leipzig University): From 16th September to 14th October I had the opportunity to visit Prof. Jens Meiler’s Lab where I wanted to perform some structural computations to complete a pending scientific paper. This turned out to be a major task for 4 weeks only. But together with Dr. David Nanneman, Stephanie Hirst DeLuca and Sam DeLuca, we managed to finish this ambitious project successfully. In the process, I learned a lot about computational structural biology and became familiar with an important method in this field.
Beside the heavy scientific work, I enjoyed very much the special southern cuisine, visiting downtown Nashville and of course some country music places. After some self-studies of football rules and strategies, I decided to watch a football game (Vanderbilt Commodores vs. Missouri Tigers) in the Vanderbilt Arena. Even though the Vandi team lost the game, I enjoyed the atmosphere a lot.
Before I had to return to Germany, Jens Meiler invited us to a picnic at a beautiful winery. The wine was very good and the weather, especially compared to Germany, fantastic: 27 °C and sunshine.
To sum it up: a busy but very successful scientific exchange, where I learned a lot from very nice colleagues and discovered a beautiful part of the USA.