My friend Franz, who runs a delightful blog Mikrob(io)log (in Slovenian) alerted me that the team of undergraduates from the University of Ljubljana won the iGEM 2007 at MIT the other day. They did it for the second year in a row (all brand new students, of course). The Ljubljana team won in the Health & Medicine category for their work on HIV-1 virus. One member of the team is Franz's student. Congratulations to the Slovenian team!
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Visit the Balkans, join the Lost Highway Expedition (already in progress):
Congratulations to George Cachianes (who I've written about before), his amazing students from Abraham Lincoln High School, and collaborators at UCSF!
One of the highlights of the visit to Trieste was the opportunity to finally meet an old blog-friend of mine. Franc Nekrep is a professor of Mikrobiology in Ljubljana, Slovenia and we have been reading each others blogs for a couple of years now. It was so much fun to finally meet in person.
Over at Mind Hacks, Vaughan discusses a fascinating new paper on how psychotic delusions take on different manifestations over time:
This is totally random and not insightful in any way, but I'd just like to share that Ljubljana is perhaps the coolest city I have ever been to. I passed through on my way to Italy once, and it's like a little Disney town, except not plastic and fake. It has beautiful architecture and layout, a wonderful history, and a really laid back but not at all lazy atmosphere.
It's been many years since the last time I visited Ljubljana but I will always remember it exactly as you describe - a beautiful and welcoming place. I hope I get to visit it again soon.
Hi, I just wanted to clarify that Peking was the iGEM 2007 Grand Prize winner. Ljubljana was the Grand Prize Winner last year and took away the Health & Medicine award this year, but they didn't win the Grand Prize. Best of luck to all the iGEMmers this year and next year - I can't wait to see what Ljubljana does next.
-Mac Cowell, iGEM Coordinator