Day 26: Swanky

Wednesday after my interviews I met my roommate Felix. He's from Germany, and just flew over so we are both on the same jet-lag schedule, I don't know if they planned that or not. He's really funny and nice, he has a masters degree and has some more tech experience in neurobiology. He's interested in the molecular basis of behavior, which is a really cool topic.

We had a swanky dinner with cocktails where all the grad students and prospective students mingled. A bunch of the grad students are really great, and I had the same shell of a conversation with about 10 other prospectives (where are you from what are you interested in who are you interviewing etc...)

I didn't eat quite enough, I spent way too much time talking. I guess that's better than the alternative.

After dinner a small group of us went out for hot chocolate. Kristian knew a place where they have orange mint hot chocolate, and it was great getting to talk to everyone in this smaller setting. We swapped some stories about experiences in undergrad, and after a couple hours there I felt pretty close with the group but was pretty ready for bed, as was Felix.

The next day we woke up and saw a bunch of faculty presentations. There is some incredible stuff going on, I'll get into that later.

Lunch was a Chinese food buffet, again encouraging mingling between grad students and undergrads. This was followed by a 3 hour block of one-on-one faculty interviews. One of the faculty who I was scheduled to interview with was the most interesting man in the world.

His name is Florian Engert, he's from Germany and was once of the ping-pong champion of Munich. He still carries a pretty thick accent, and roller-blades almost everywhere. When he gave his talk that morning, he was in roller blades, and no one has beat him at ping pong even when he's wearing roller blades. His interview was nothing like anyone else's. He was trying to test critical thinking and reasoning skills, which he thought was a pretty good indicator of success in grad school. I was asked questions about eclipses, phases of the moon, boats floating down rivers, fighter pilots, HIV testing, dot products, and magical hats. I think the idea was that no one's background would prepare them for this breadth of question, but I think I did quite well.

My other interviews were pretty science-y.

Back to faculty research. There is crazy stuff happening, almost scary. The scariest is probably where they can use direct stimulation of specific neurons to control the activity of lab mice. The stimulation can be either electrical, or, optical. In this video, as they explain, a little transmitter is linked directly to specific neurons that persuade the rat to move around like a remote control car. In this video, the principle is essentially the same, except the mouse has been genetically engineered to have certain neurons respond to a certain light signal (note it runs in circles when the light turns on). This was a little bit scary. In the absence of ethical restrictions, the technology exists to modify mammalian nervous systems and link a particular output to a certain light stimulus.

There was also some microscopy that broke the laws of physics, obtaining higher resolution than is possible with visible light.

And there is something called the "brainbow" fish, which expresses different colored fluorescent proteins in different neural lines, allowing direct visualization.

Thursday night we had another fancy soiree (open bar) and I got to sit next to John Dowelman, who told me all about the history of Harvard. We got in to how the houses are usually named after great university presidents, but this method tragically fails to recognize president Hoar. 

Friday was another round of faculty talks and then a campus tour. The campus tour was incredible, everything they have is top of the line. I was particularly awed by the laser-disection microscope, and the essentially complete sequencing facility. They have a contract with Zeiss (the best microscope company in the world)  called the "evergreen program", where none of their scopes are allowed to get more than 3 years old.

Here is some secular stained glass:

And the most expensive building on campus (per square foot):

 They had to fight a $700,000 lawsuit in order to put up the building that is roughly 15 square feet.

Friday afternoon there were some talks by graduate students that were clearly designed as comedy skits to try to woo us into committing there. This was followed by pizza and beer, which actually does happen every friday afternoon. I then took a nap before going out to the pub for the sendoff party.

I recovered all weekend, and slept for most of the flight home. It's good to be back.