Cruisin Clara: abroad AND in work mode

Hola de Granada!

Somehow, I am back across the pond AGAIN! This time, I’m in Spain for a microfluidic conference called MicroTAS. I’ll be presenting a poster on my research tomorrow, and I couldn’t be more excited!

It wouldn’t be a true first post of the trip if I didn’t tell you every detail about my travel journey… so, let’s begin.

I was supposed to fly from Detroit to Newark to Madrid on Friday, with my arrival time being 9 am. From there, I planned to catch a train to Granada, leaving at 1:35 pm.

Thursday night, I received a text from United suggesting that I change my flight due to possible storms on the east coast. The last time I received a message like this, my overnight flight was completely canceled.

For over an hour, I sat at my table with a pen and paper and worked out the possible situations. Eventually, I decided that Frankfurt was my best option. I was hesitant, considering my recent experiences with that airport, but it was the only way I could guarantee to be in Europe by Saturday. There were several other flights to Madrid from Frankfurt, so I knew I could make it to Granada in time for the conference.

I arrived in Frankfurt at 5:15 am, prepared to spend my next four hours waiting in line for border patrol. Instead, I found the airport to be completely empty! I only had to wait 2 mins. I made my way to the Lufthansa Senator Lounge (thanks, Kirk!!!) where I ate breakfast, read my book, and took a shower. Before I knew it, it was time to board the plane to Madrid. Unfortunately, I got stopped at the gate and told I would have to check my bag. My flight was supposed to land at 12:40 pm, which left me very little time to make it to the train station (hence the reason I opted to carry my bag!). Now, I was worried. I knew I would get to Granada eventually because I booked a bus ticket for 4 pm just in case… but I just really wanted to get there already!!!

When I got off the plane in Madrid, I rushed to the baggage claim, only to have to wait 20+ minutes for the bags to arrive. Luckily, mine was the first one on the belt. I instantly booked an Uber and ran to the pickup spot.

My Uber arrived, and off we went. My colleagues (who were already at the train station) texted me the platform number so that I wouldn’t have to waste any time.

20 minutes until the train leaves

15

10

All it would have taken was a long stop light and I probably would have missed the train. Luckily, I arrived just in time! Yippeeeeee!!!!

Camila and Hannah were sitting in the seats right behind me, so we chatted for a bit. I spent the rest of the time looking out the window at the rows and rows of olive trees, admiring the cutest baby next to me, and finally getting some shut-eye (I can never sleep on the plane).

At about 5 pm, we arrived in Granada. I set my stuff down and out the door I went! I spent the next few hours walking around the city and intentionally getting lost. At one point, I ended up at a theatrical performance in a courtyard! There were two women singing, but I couldn’t really tell what the story was about. At one point, the woman kept dramatically singing “Allí! Allí”. It made me laugh because earlier that day, on the plane from Frankfurt to Granada, there was a group of high school-aged boys, with their Spanish teacher, practicing how to say “allí”.

I also saw incredible views of La Alhambra, some fountains, and the Cathedral of Granada. It has been over 7 years since I’ve been to Granada, so it was fun to see the city as an adult and compare it to my memories.

At 8:30, I met up with Camila and Hannah for dinner at Verde Rama. We shared the BEST patatas bravas EVER and seafood paella. 10/10

Our waiter was excited to hear that we’re from the US because he spent some time living in Miami and DC.

After dinner, we went to a shop nearby and got ice cream. A man walked by and exclaimed something. Without even thinking, I knew exactly what he was saying.

“It’s too cold for ice cream!”

I looked at Camila, who is fluent in Spanish, and said, “HA! Did he just say it’s too cold for ice cream?!”

Sure enough, that’s what he said. It always surprises me when I understand Spanish after it’s been sooo long since I’ve used it!

We walked around until we started the shiver. He was right… too cold for ice cream 😆

MicroTAS Day 1

This morning was the first day of the microTAS conference. I woke up, attempted to iron my clothes (not very skilled in this department), and walked to the conference center. I waited in line for about 10 minutes to collect my name tag. As I was waiting, the woman behind me commented about the line being long. We started talking, and when I told her I’m from the University of Michigan, she said, “NO WAY! I started my PhD at UMich! Go blue!”

Apparently, she started her PhD there but then her advisor left, so she followed him to NYU.

She told me that her goal for the conference was to find the three Michigan people. How crazy is it that we ran into each other before the conference even started?!

At 9 am, we had our first workshop. Hannah and I went to the “Optical Spectroscopy in Microfluidics” session. There were four presenters, all professors from universities around the world. They mostly talked about Raman scattering, which is a technique that uses lasers to detect molecules. It’s super cool because each molecule has a unique “fingerprint” that can be used to track disease states, for example. I don’t use this technique, but it was still fun to learn about!

From 12-2 pm, we had a break for lunch. I met Hannah downstairs and we waited for Camila. While we were waiting, Adrienne appeared. I introduced her to Hannah and asked if she wanted to join us for lunch. She said she was waiting on a friend but they would join us! Yay! In the meantime, we chatted about our research and career paths. She’s a 5th year, so she’s getting ready to graduate soon. And she’s been to MicroTAS before! Her friend, Erik, was someone she had met at the conference in Montreal a few years ago.

The five of us went to a restaurant nearby and ordered croquetas for lunch. Except for Erik. He ordered tomatoes and tuna. When his plate of tomatoes arrived, we laughed at him for spending €18 on a plate of tomatoes. he confessed that the tomatoes aren’t very good in Sweden, so it was worth it.

I enjoyed talking with Erik a bit about Sweden and our research projects. I told him about my day trip to Ales Stenar, and he laughed at the fact that I drove all that way to see the stone circle. He lives in Malmö and was apparently in Copenhagen the same weekend that I was there! How crazy is that?!

His research is intriguing because he uses microfluidics to study soil. He told me that he has spent a lot of time talking with local farmers about their crops and the diseases that take them out. Once again, someone is incorporating local knowledge into their research (I’m referring to my conversation with Jaiana in Copenhagen, in case you haven’t read my recent blog post yet 😉). RESPECT!

After lunch, we went back to the conference center for a second workshop. Adrienne and I were in the same room this time, and our session was called “from patient to chip and back: microfluidic workflows for clinical translation”. There were five presenters, and they were all truly incredible. By the way they interacted with each other, it was clear that they all had a lot of respect for one another. They laughed, praised each other’s work, and delivered each word with passion. Although their research projects weren’t very similar to the work I’m doing now, it was VERY relevant to the project that I worked on some years ago at Dana Farber. The whole discussion centered around isolating circulating tumor DNA (short fragments of DNA that’s released into the blood stream by tumors & is a way to detect cancer early, assess treatment response, etc.) I couldn’t help but think about how much I loved doing cancer research! I love my current project too, but sometimes I miss that realm of research. Maybe I’ll go back to that someday!

The time FLEW. All of a sudden, it was 5:30 (way over our end time) and I was wishing the presentations would go on for even longer. Alas, we had a welcome reception to get to.

The welcome reception was so much fun & a great way to meet people. I found Hannah, Camila, Adrienne, and Erik again. We ate some paella and then made a few stops at the industry tables. I talked with reps at Advanced Microfluidics, ElveFlow, and VascuBio. It was fun to talk with people about the parts that we use every day in our experiments and brainstorm ways to make things better!

Eventually, my friends and I ended up sitting at a table outside talking about our research and chemistry experiences. We met another PhD student named Loes, and she’s from the Netherlands. She does super cool geothermal research! She told us all about how she dissolves rocks in microfluidic chips. We were all sitting there, mouths open, going “WHATTTT?! THAT’S SO COOL!”

She laughed and said, “this is literally the only place where I would ever get that response… usually people say why do you want to dissolve rocks?”

We then went around the circle sharing common microfluidics-related experiences (ie PDMS devices are the worst to make, the thought of working with HF is terrifying, we’ve all had questionable safety experiences… the list goes on).

It was so nice to be in a room with people who just ✨get it✨. For context, there’s only one other microfluidic lab in the chemistry department at Michigan, so it’s very rare that people know what droplet microfluidics even is!

All of a sudden, the lights turned on and we were told the building was closing. Somehow, it was already 8:30 pm!

I walked back to my place, went for a short run around the city, and then got an 11 pm dinner at a restaurant nearby.

Buenas noches! It’s 1 am and I have to be there at 7:30 am tomorrow (today?!) to set up my poster.

Until next time,

Clara