Working in Italy

I have to tell you all that I am totally off with my time and days.

I am bringing you news about my day on Tuesday, June 16. I am going to try to play catch up so bare with me.

I woke up sick this morning and I think it was just from all the stress, travel, time change, and discomfort from flight. By noon Italian time, I was better.

So last we spoke, the students had a poster session. Stephanie Fraley from Denis Wirtz lab, won the graduate student prize, which was a 'nano' ipod and plaque from our industrial representatives from Merck Research Laboratories. Stephanie was very surprised she won because she had only come to take care off AV and lighting. She is currently doing research and decided to present a poster as well. Good decision!

The first session was about commercialization of Bio-nanotechnology? So why is that important? Well, researchers and students alike spend loads of time of time in the lab doing research, trying to find cures, better ways to deliver drugs, or better methods for medical technologies. The discussion was very important because it addressed the issue of what happens next. What happens after you have done the research? How does it reach the people?

After this interesting discussion, the students convinced me to take a hike--yes, nature hike to the next province up the hill, Barga. The rest of the group was taking an excursion to Lucca by bus. I opted to take the hike with the students. We ate lunch and set out for our journey. It was a total of 5 of us with trail directions from 30 years ago. The directions stated that it would take 1 hour one way. The sun was high and we were motivated. I took a bottle of water and some cups and we began to walk. From the hotel to the entrance took a total of 20 minutes, it was fine going down hill,but I could only imagine the walk up hill coming back. The directions said to look for a cemetary on our right and then walk for 15 minutes and we would know that we were walking in the right direction. It was a very small cemetary but filled with fresh flowers. Next, the directions said look for the house with a bunch of cars and then a Madonna will be on your right, at that point go down a dirt path in the woods. This is where the hike got very interesting. Well the path was not dirt in was brick and steep going downhill. On the other side was a creek and a old three story house that looked haunted. We then had to walk up a steep cobble stone hill to another Madonna. Once we found this Madonna and climbed another hill...yes another hill we would have reached Barga. Well we did it in an hour and smelled and looked like it.

Barga was...well...we had a fun hike. We made it back to the bottom of the hotel entrance it about 25-30 minutes and attempted to climb the hill back to the top. We stop to look at goats grazing and with the sun beaming realized that it would definately take us another hour to make it to the top. Valerie, a student from Venice caught a ride to the top and went to her car and picked us up from the bottom.

The second session was ended by David Gracias, a professor at Hopkins, who gave an innovative talk on nanotools and devices for medicine.