Back in Oxford

I've finally returned to Oxford. Thanks to everyone who made my American tour so much fun, especially all of the folks who hosted me for one or more nights. And now for the abbreviated recap.

The Hertz Symposium was incredible. The conference brought together a lot of really bright folks doing incredible work in all of the physical science (condensed matter, atomic physics, quantum computing, theoretical chemistry, biochemistry, organic and inorganic chem, systems biology, mathematical biology, etc.). It was great to see such a broad range of topics all presented at a high level. Bill Gates spoke the first night about his foundation and its work. He was very impressive. Gates is extremely well-read (he visited every poster presentation where he asked pertinent questions) and thoughtful. For example, when discussing malaria eradication, Gates discussed how it is important to model the effects of proposed plans to ensure that knockout punch can be delivered before a superbug could evolve. Other speakers included Jay Keasling and Xiaowei Zhuang talking respectively about engineering yeast to synthesize anti-malarial drugs and super-resolution optical imaging.

After the conference I hung out in the South Bay area with Anthony Chong, went to the touristy sites in the city with Sarah Stokes and her friend, hung out with Ryan and Kayte, then checked out Lawrence Berkeley Lab with Jordan Katz. It was great fun hopping from friend to friend. I tried to move on to the next before wearing out my welcome. Hopefully I was successful in that regard.

From SF I flew to St. Louis and met up with Gina Gage, who is now in architecture school at Wash U. My mom and sister joined me in St. Louis to go to the City Museum, a museum which is hardly a museum. It's really an abandoned warehouse turned into a giant fun house.

After a brief stopover in Columbia the family drove up to Iowa to visit Mark and Kari. What Iowa lacks in beauty it made up for in food. We ate at a restaurant called the Machine Shed, which was supposed to serve as a tribute to farmers. My all you can eat catfish dinner came out with two whole catfish. After struggling to put those away they came out and offered me more. Family time was rounded out with a visit to my momma's famous hometown then finally a few days at home.

Gifts for my soon-to-be nephew

The final leg of my journey was at Caltech. It's remarkable just how fun the place can be when there's no homework. In addition to meeting up with far too many friends to count, I got to partake in the prefrosh weekend activities - capture the flag, ruddock's hot tub, deconstruction, open mic night, etc etc etc.

Deconstruction - yes, I know this is horrible.

More photos are up on facebook.