Three months have never flown by so quickly. From the first day I arrived, I began my busy summer of exploration, work, and adjustment to life in Switzerland, supported all along the way by my fellow interns and boxed ice coffee from Migros.
Let’s start with my lab. I interned this summer in the Medical Image Processing Lab under the supervision of Professor Dimitri Van De Ville and Elvira Pirondini. During my time, I aided the efforts of a largescale project investigating stroke recovery in monkeys following a brain lesion. In my work, I recreated a processing pipeline from literature designed to preprocess primate fMRI and MRI data. I also employed mathematical tools based on graph signal processing theory to find coactivation patterns in the resting brain activity. Throughout my work, I had to do plenty of literature reviewal, both to learn the theory behind everything and in order to solve the many issues that came up trying to accurately process the MRI data. The process definitely required a lot of creative thinking. But the lab was super helpful with any questions I had and it was a lot of fun to meet such a group of people with diverse backgrounds. What was also fun was being a part of such a large scale project. Although I lived in Lausanne, the lab was located in Geneva at Campus Biotech and all of the monkeys were in a lab at the University of Fribourg! I even got to go there and help in the collection of new MRI data, where I was able to see the monkeys firsthand. A lot of commuting was involved, but the costs were covered and the comfort and reliability of Swiss trains meant that I didn’t mind it at all.
Speaking of trains, that brings me to the rest of my summer for I spent an uncountable number of hours on those trains. There is just so much one can see and do in Switzerland. First off, there are plenty of touristy things to do. From visiting cities like Lucerne to wandering the picturesque vineyards, learning some history at the Chateau de Chillon, or eating cheese in Gruyeres, one can never go wrong. But there is also so much more, especially hiking. Although many things are closed on Sunday, hiking trails certainly aren’t and if you aren’t a hiker, you should become one anyway. One could spend a lifetime exploring the trails of Switzerland, getting lost in the beauty of the rolling hills and water so blue it looks fake. From a leisurely group hike up Dent de Vaulion followed by fondue to catching a 6am train and running the 25km Hardergrat trail in time to catch the last train home, there are hikes for everyone. Definitely check out the amazing trails of Interlaken and recover with a dip in one of its lakes. There is nothing like swimming in the shadow of the Alps. Regardless, it’s hard to go wrong spending a summer in Switzerland.
Ronan Perry, Johns Hopkins University
Medical Image Processing Lab (MIP:Lab)