International Trip – Vilnius

It is already a few weeks ago, but it feels like yesterday: the International Trip 2017! This year we went to Vilnius, the beautiful capital of Lithuania. Quite far away, so for the first time in the history of the SHA International Trip we traveled by plane.

A study trip cannot be called a study trip without a visit to a university. We went to the Life Sciences Centre of Vilnius University. It was located in a modern building, about which the director of the centre did not stop with saying they used EU funding to build it and how grateful they were. After a lecture on the scientific activities at the Life Sciences Centre, a guided tour through the building and a visit to the associated Zoology Museum had been organised for us.

The next day we went to another faculty of Vilnius University: Matematikos ir Informatikos Fakultetas (or in English: Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, which you could have guessed). Here a few researchers and PhDs told us about their, often interdisciplinary, research. Their talks were interesting and diverse: from applications of the Navier-Stokes equation to bioinformatics where the movement of bacteria were predicted and developing a smart lamp with exactly the right colours. Afterwards, we had a peculiar excursion to their library and coffee corner.

Finding a company that is willing to welcome such a large group like ours can be hard, especially when you are from abroad. However, we can be called a lucky committee because we found two research institutes that were eager to welcome us: the Centre for Innovative Medicine and the Nature Research Centre. At the former, researchers are doing a lot of research on the field of health care. For example in stem cell technology, immunology and regenerative medicine. Several researchers gave a lecture and we were given a tour through different departments. At the Nature Research Centre some enthusiastic researchers told us during a tour in small groups about what they were doing. All were totally different topics (algae, malaria, birds, isotopes etc.), but of course they had one thing in common: nature.

Not only our hosts at the Nature Research Centre were enthusiastic and kind. We noticed that everywhere we came, we were welcomed with a lot of kindness. We would like to thank all of them for that (in case they read this, we fear they will not). We also would like to thank all the participants of the trip. We have had a great week with you! We hope you have had too, during the interesting visits, the pub-quiz that we arranged and also during your free time in Vilnius!

The International Trip Committee 17/18

Rian, Camée, Stijn, Iwan, Lucia, Arvid and Johnray