Welcome to the "Büro Waldblick" (engl. "Forest View Office"). Yes, indeed, that's the view that Martin, my colleague, and I am sharing since we moved to our final office in mid-May. Actually, our group has expanded a little, or rather a lot, since we Ph.D. students have more than doubled and we have a second postdoc. If you want to get more information, the best thing to do is to check the new homepage of Prof. Henrik Walter's group, or, rather, the homepage of Henrik's new group. However, you'll have to wait patiently for a little while until some information is available in English, too.

Finally, I could leave the student's life behind entirely and begin my very own research at the University of Frankfurt in Prof. Henrik Walter's laboratory where I investigated the contribution of emotions to processes of decision making, especially moral decision making using methods of brain research and running my experiments at the Brain Imaging Center in Frankfurt, which I already knew from my internship at the Max Planck Institute (see below). Actually, the MPI was just at the other side of the road such that I regularly met my acquaintances from before. At the beginning, I spent most of my work with learning methods of brain research. But fortunately my new colleagues in the lab proved to be very nice which resulted in a high motivation and a lot of fun. Sorry about that, but our webadmin has been, err, busy with many other things, you can be assured!
However, my experiences with the university hospital's administrations were not so nice. Throughout the first six weeks, there was one major difficulty with them every week. For example, it took my colleague three months to get a key for the brain scanner. I often had the impression that they understood their job to consist in hindering us scientists, not in supporting us. I had made different experiences with that at Caltech (see below), where you usually had to take care of some formal stuff only once and then could be sure that it would be done soon. Therefore, I believe I can speak for most of us if I say that we were very happy to move to the University of Bonn after only a short while in Frankfurt.

On the left side you can see the scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) involved in Dr. Shimojo's Implicit Brain Function ERATO Project. If you wish, you can play a nice game, for I tell you the nations of the people but not who is who: Korean, Rumanian, Austrian, Japanese, US-American (immigrated), and German. This mixture is quite representative of the international and multicultural life in Los Angeles and at Caltech. Did you know that LA is the only major city in the US where Caucasians are not the majority? There are much more Hispanics, though I haven't seen much of them on campus, besides Ernie, who delivers the best Mexican food to Caltech.
In Dr. Shimojo's lab I planned and executed two behavioral experiment paradigms, one on visual preference and the other on gesture in human communication (together with Dr. Junghyun Park, not shown in the picture). The status of the projects is pending and I do hope I will have the opportunity to continue research in this direction, ideally again at Caltech or one of the other of Shimojo's ERATO sites, for example Japan.
On the right side you can see the building that I worked in, the Beckman Institute (BI) on the amazing Caltech campus. Please note the nice fountain, too, the so-called "gene pool", because the spurts taken together resemble the double helix. It is thus not a coincidence that the BI is one of the buildings of the biology division, though not exclusively. Unfortunately, my lab was in the basement and thus I didn't have much of the Californian sun on days on which I worked long, because the sun set already at 8pm. Dr. Shimojo's office, of course, is on the top floor with a nice view over the campus.
All in all it has been a great experience to live in California for a while and I am especially grateful for my terrific guest family, Linda Zhang, her husband Rick, and their son Robin.
For more pictures from the US, check out my page at flickr.com.

In 2004 I immersed for the first time into a really scientific environment. With the aid of Axel Kohler, I read through the scientific literature on apparent motion, a visual illusion that is thoroughly investigated by Dr. Lars Muckli's Group and especially Axel. Besides the interesting psychophysical project, for which I adjusted the stimulus software and eventually ran more than ten subjects, I participated in the vast supply of scientific events at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research (MPI), like journal clubs, labmeetings, the weekly Kandel club, and seminars and lectures held by the real specialists. Thus, on the one hand the environment at the MPI is on a very high scientific level, but on the other I can also imagine that sometimes there may be too much going on that is not really related to your work and there may be a risk that one gets involved in too many distracting things.
On the right side you can see the photograph of the MPI building. The lab where I worked, the so-called Tierhaus (animal house), is hidden behind the tall building. As the name suggests, this is the place where the laboratory and experimentation animals are kept. When I went through the stairway there, it always smelled like a pet shop. Personally, I do not appreciate animal experimentation but from an ethical point of view, I cannot decide whether it is justifyable or not in elementary research. Certainly, the lives of a couple of people have been safed, prolonged, or enhanced thanks to animal research. But then there is also so much experimentation that is only aimed at facilitating the researchers' careers--but who would openly admit so?
Leaving aside the scientific part of my internship, I was also very glad to share the lab with such nice people as Axel and Marcus Naumer, who recently has joined the Department of Psychological Medicine (or is it Medical Psychology?) at the University of Frankfurt. I also enjoyed the always interesting discussions with Michael Wibral, Lars, and Matthias Munk. All in all I was so astonished by their not only scientific but also philosophical knowledge, that I addressed two small presents I gave Axel and Marcus after the internship had ended to the "Deparment of Neurophilosophy", a mistake that remained unnoticed by the two.
When my internship had begun, a couple of wild roses had bloomed and everytime we went to the refactory we smelled their sweet scent. When my time at the MPI was over, the roses, covered by December's snow, were wilted and their scent was gone. But still, there were some blossoms who fought the cold climate, just as I would have liked to stay longer at the lab, found it too early to return to the dull life at university.
A couple of days later, I went again to Frankfurt and had my first brain scan in a Siemens Trio 3 Tesla scanner that you can see on the right side in Frankfurt's Brain Imaging Center, where a couple of groups measure their experimental subjects. Katharina, who worked as a Diploma student at the MPI, conducted the experiment for Lars. From what Lars told me a while later when we met in the refactory, my data has not been so clear. Maybe that was because I am left-handed? At that time I hardly remembered the task. What I won't forget, however, is the noise the machine makes while active. Good that I wore earplugs. Half a year later I would lie in another Siemens Trio, but on the other side of the Atlantic, namely, in the basement of Caltech's Broad building.

Among a couple of other subjects, I studied Philosophy, Computer Science, and Psychology at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. Throughout the last three years there, I had all in all 18 contracts at four different institutes as a teaching and research assistant. Most notably, I worked for Dr. Thomas Metzinger, chair of the Theoretical Philosophy group, about two years and became acquainted with up-to-date philosophical research projects. In his Nachwuchsgruppe, an occasional meeting of young philosophers and scientists who are engaged in studies related to philosophy of mind, I met a couple of very intelligent poeple from Europe and some of Metzinger's international colleagues. However, without the lectures and seminars of Metzinger and Dr. Elke Brendel, philosophy would have been boring in Mainz, because the other professors are only concerned with historical issues. But I would not have studied philosophy anyway if Brendel's lecture in my first semester, where I was simply trying out a couple of subjects, had not made me fall in love with philosophy.
Also related with philosophy, but not with studying itself, was my work in the Fachschaft Philosophie. Together with a couple of other people, ranging from as few as four to about ten, we cared for the social life and needs of our fellow philosophical students (and beyond). More than a little frustrating, however, was the work as a student representative in some of the Deparment of Philosophy's administrative meetings. So frustrating indeed, that I completely lost my motivation to work at a university by the end of 2004. I can now confirm that it is a truism that many academics in Germany have to waste a good part of their time not only with administrative work, but with stupid administrative work and with stupid rather political issues. Behind closed doors, I beleive, it is often not the academic welfare in whose interests decisions are made, but rather particular interests and the strive for power.
Psychology was a good subject as a minor and I profited most from Dr. Heiko Hecht's lectures and seminars. In computer science, however, I mostly met hostile people and it was more than a little frustrating that they force their students into teamwork with people who are neither teammates nor working. I didn't feel very well there and consider most of the time I spent with learning for computer science in Mainz as wasted, even though I also worked as a teaching assistant there and helped to introduce my fellow students into the mysterious world of algorithms.
The other day I had a nice discussion in the room of the Fachschaft with a young student who felt a little frustrated after I told him about some of my experiences in Mainz and what I think about them. But I had to make clear that I did not want to discourage his studies or recommend to go to another university. What I wanted to suggest to him was to restrict his studies to the (few) really interesting lectures and seminars and rather try to get some further skills and references beyond the university. In my opinion, that's what will make you individual and interesting once you start applications, not all of the time you wasted in bad courses. If you have more questions about studying in Mainz, especially one of the subjects I described here superficially, please feel free to contact me by email.