The First Italian National Conference on Bioengineering

Last week was an excellent work week. Finally having finished reading my small heap of papers, I stretched on my first pair of latex gloves and began my wet lab work. For now, I'm in a small lab in the Cisanello Hospital in the outskirts of Pisa. Here, I am making small PLGA (clear gel) microspheres (diameter on the order of 1 micrometer) that will slowly release a chemoattractant (drug) over the course of two weeks in order to chemically direct neuronal growth in Petri dishes.

On Thursday, I had the good fortune to attend the first ever Italian National Conference on Bioengineering! My heart-rate skyrocketed yesterday morning: I walked into the Neural Engineering poster session on the third and final day of this conference. I finally met some of the scientists whose work had lured me away from France and to this country whose language I hardly know. There were so many amazing research presentations. I've since been in touch with one of these researchers and might even take a weekend trip to check out just how he uses cultures of rat cortical neurons to control his robots. (Amazing!)