For me, sabbaticals are time to both explore new research avenues and decrease the backlog of manuscripts on my desk. Since the research in my lab is computational, I am able to continue directing my lab and communicating with my lab members no matter where I travel.
Over the summer, I attended a conference in Milan, Italy, also visiting the nearby Lakes Region. Then I spent two months, September and October, as a visiting professor at the Department of Biomedical Engineering at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The current chair of the department is a long-term experimental collaborator of mine. While in D.C., we started a new project investigating the structural and functional remodeling in human heart failure. We also brainstormed new projects and planned submissions of new grants. My lab members and I also managed to submit several manuscripts while I was in D.C.
I traveled in November to Melbourne, Australia, where I presented at the eighth Asia Pacific Heart Rhythm Society Scientific Sessions, and in December I will be in Lugano, Switzerland, where I will present at the eighth TRM Forum on Computer Simulation and Experimental Assessment of Cardiac Function. My intention is to then spend a month or more in New York City this winter, working with collaborators at NYU School of Medicine and at the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University. I will also be attending conferences in the spring and the summer, in San Francisco, and in Tokyo and Sapporo, Japan.
