Time flies

During the first two months I was mainly assimilating into the academic environment, I was learning to use various scientific methods and protocols.  Among many others I got my hands on brain imaging devices such as magnetic resonance, EEG, eye-tracker, I learned a lot about programming and data analysis in Matlab. When I arrived back to Pasadena after Christmas the nature of my tasks changed a little bit as they became more practically oriented. I help out post-docs and PhD's with experiments and I am getting deeper and deeper into the vast lands of data analyses. I am even in preparations of my own scientific study. It is not certain whether everything will be ready before I leave Caltech, but I can always conduct and present it as part of my Bachelor's thesis next year. In any way, it is great to receive advice from people who already accomplished a lot in the field.

Picture 1: A replica of Curiosity Mars rover, which finds itself on Mars as you read this. It is being controlled from local Jet Propulsion Laboratory

The academic life at Caltech never sleeps and I have many opportunities to discover a lot of interesting things even from other branches of science. For example yesterday I found myself (merely by coincidence) on a seminar of prof. Judea Pearl, bearer of the 2011 Turing Award (nicknamed Nobel Prize in Computer Science). His main research field is artificial intelligence and statistics, which is actually closer to my computational neuroscience than it may seem. Prof. Pearl talked about his Theory of Counterfactuals, which attempts to insert purely hypothetical scenarios into the scientific method. For example: patient received cure A, but what would be his medical state if he received cure B. It is relatively simple mathematically, but the result can't be empirically tested due to mutual exclusivity of cures A and B. The talk was indeed very interesting and thought spurring in regard the method's implications in neuroscience. 

TEDxCaltech: The Brain

Apart from studying and working in the lab I have conducted several trips around LA. It would take one ages to visit everything that LA has go to offer, but I already made the most important venues, such as the HOLLYWOOD writing, LA down town and other.

I am also trying to get my name on a list for an excursion to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is part of Caltech even though it has its own campus couple miles away. Such excursion is only organized several times a year and it brings one to the very control room of the Mars Curiosity rover.

Good news is also start of the new NHL season. I am already looking forward to the match between Anaheim and Columbus next week. One of the players in the Columbus team is Vaclav Prospal, born in Ceske Budejovice like me. I also started attending weekly archery classes, which I wanted to do already for a long time. It has the immense advantage that it takes place in completely different environment and it is very different activity from my daily routine. Above all the Pasadena archery range is located in a beautiful natural park Arroyo Seco.
The time in Pasadena flies...