So even though very few people ever look at this.. here is another update!
I just finished up my first set of grad school visits. A little more stressful since both of these visits were actual interviews. Anyway, a week ago Thursday I headed out to San Diego to check the Scripps Research Institute (TSRI). Met at the airport by my grad student liason, Jeremy Mills, a third yr in the Shultz lab. Turned out there were about 6 prospectives on the flight mostly from further east (brown, colombia). A gorgeous evening, sunny and a bit breezy. I think they were amused that I got so excited about the sun. So anyway, stopped by the hotel up in La Jolla where TSRI is located overlooking Torrey Pines Golf Course and the ocean. We then proceeded to the group dinner at a Mexican restaurant with grad students and most of the prospectives. I headed out early to give George Murphy a call. He met up at the hotel and we had a drink at the bar while catching up on things. He lives much further south in a less pretentious area of San Diego. He really seems to enjoy it out there. Talked about the overabundance of rain that CA has gotten recently. Everyone there was freaking out since it is realtively constant sunny and 70 yr round there. Met my roomate who went to school at a small college on the north side of MA and had a very similar schedule to me for visits.
The next day we had actual inteviews. Definitely an intense experience of being 'on' for basically 12 hrs. I talked with M.G. Finn, Ben Cravatt, Joel Gottesfeld, Sheng Ding, Dale Boger (former Purdue prof) and Pete Shultz himself. A nice lunch in the middle sitting with the Dean Jeff Kelly, the head of the chem department and noble prize winner Kurt Wurthrich. Dinner with mingling lasted until about 9. I did get really practiced at my whole describing my research spiel. I really enjoyed the atmosphere. Very layed back, supportive, no undergrads that you have to TA. But the big disadvantage is that you have to drive EVERYWHERE in san diego as it is very spread out. Anyway the next day we toured some of the facilities and SIMBio across the street. Amazing how many biotech companies are in that area. Most of the profs have there own companies on the side! Then the 1st yr students took us down to the beach for lunch and then splitting up to explore San Diego. I headed to the down town gas lamp area. We walked a bit and I was able to get in touch with Dan Curtis , a former bass drummer who is working out there nowadays. Then about 5, off to the airport and flight to San Francisco.
A bus ride to the Hotel. All in the dark so except for some awesome views of the bay and bridge, I didn't get a good sense of the city layout. On Sunday we didn't have anything till 11:30 when limos picked the 21 of us up and took us to the Mission Bay UCSF campus. A few presentations and we split into groups to go around the city. Unfortunately, it was POURING! My group took a taxi around, went to the bridge and walked out to it, getting soaked in the process. Then a roundabout sight seeing trip over to Heit and Ashbury. Where we just hung out and had a coffee. Then dinner. Yes the routine of these things is just talk, eat, talk, eat, walk a bit, eat.... Monday was a long day of interviews most of mine were before lunch. I talked to a grad student of Kip Guy who is doing interesting research but is leaving this summer for a department of his own in Memphis. The spoke with Charly Craik the head of the Chem/Chem BIo department. Then a random computational chemist followed by a professor working on parasitic diseases and finally Gott who is more on the pharmochemical side of things but definiitely cool. Plenty of eating and socializing in between. unfortunately it was an absolutely gorgeous day and we were stuck in side! But the Mission Bay campus is BRAND new so has really nice facilities and the whole areas is developing as a biotech center. More eating, got to chat with Kevan Shokat whose work on kinases is really cool and who came from the Shultz lab about the same time as my advisor Jean Chmielewski. Then a bus ride to the airport and home on a red eye via Las Vegas. Kindof interesting to see the strip from the plane at night. and then to run across 3 terminals to wait an hour for the plane to get fixed. Missed the earliest bus back to Purdue, caught the next one. Definitely an exhausting weekend.... 5 more to go!!
