Our visit to Heidelberg has definitely sharpened our minds. What we have learned, and how the experience differed from our expectations, we will outline below. First and foremost, it was very exciting to see how often interdisciplinary research is taking place in science. Especially DKFZ hosts researchers from many different backgrounds. We did not really…

For the last institute visit, we went to the top of the hills surrounding Heidelberg, to visit the newly opened Advanced Training Centre of the European Molecular Biology (EMBL) with its impressive DNA strands as staircases. The building looked very interesting. What would we learn from this visit? In contrast to many of the other…

On Friday we visited the Faculty of Physics of Heidelberg University (Physikalisches Institut). The Faculty of Physics is one of the largest in Germany, with the highest number of graduating PhD students per year. The faculty is very research-minded, and covers inter-disciplinary border areas as well as core fundamental topics, which push the boundaries of…

Cancer is a horrible disease that affects many people. One of the research institutes that try to tackle it is the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), founded in 1964. This enormous institute has many departments, ranging from tumour biology to cancer imaging and radio oncology, which contribute to a better diagnosis and therapy of cancer….

During the past decades, the foundations of science have developed a new pillar: scientific computing. Using the power of modern-day computers, it is possible to model processes, analyse data and image interesting phenomena in a sophisticated way. The University of Heidelberg thought this development was important enough to establish the IWR, the Interdisciplinary Centre for Scientific…

On Thursday, the first ‘real’ day of the excursion, we were given the choice to either visit the Heidelberg Castle and the pharmacy museum situated there, or the University of Heidelberg’s faculty of Computer Science. A part of the group set out to visit the castle and museum. After a steep climb the castle was…