Author: William Stoll
As we are wrapping up the week, most of us have experienced one full month of Italian culture and science. Slowly but surely, the initial shock of an abundance of carbs, caffeine, and sunlight is wearing off, and I find that me and my coworkers have become fully immersed and invested in Italian work culture. In contrast to our typical schedules, we find ourselves beginning every morning with a cappuccino and cornetto con cioccolato, while attempting to order and converse with those around us in Italian. Subsequently, we make our way to the lab, in which many people work together to obtain quality data and discuss the techniques and implications of our results.
I find it very rewarding to provide input and guide the undergraduates in our program, as I have worked with the same experimental techniques during my PhD. We dive into the nuances of Raman spectroscopy, and how to modify our parameters to resolve our beautiful low-frequency vibrational modes. We even push our DSC to its limits, investigating solid-to-solid phase transformations in our unique responsive molecular crystals. However, this impactful data cannot be kept between us, so during the latter half of this week, the three Bologna boys practiced plotting our data in a meaningful way, to ensure our conclusions were not lost in translation.
On Friday, I took a trip down to Modena to speak with the renowned Professor Catalano to discuss some of the data taken during our IRES program, as I am currently preparing the resulting manuscript. We talked science for quite some time, until Luca took me into the heart of Modena where we shared some delicious sandwiches. A perfect work-life balance, that the Italians are so well known for.
Outside of work, my parents came to visit for the week where we enjoyed day trips to Parma and Venice and indulged in the fine cuisine from each city. I was very impressed that each city has its own charms and of course, beautiful architecture. In Parma we tried many cheeses and prosciutto, and in Venice we took a wonderful gondola ride through the canals. It was a nice way to wrap up my week and share with my parents how amazing the IRES program has been so far.
