Vanessa (ESR2) was the 1st ESR to do a secondment. She left Cork in Ireland to Frankfurt in Germany, from 7th to 27th of July 2016. This is how she experienced this opportunity:

My secondment challenged me not only with a new country but also with a new working environment.  These changes were very stimulating and invited me to make the most out of my secondment. Not only I was able to learn a group of techniques not available in my host institution, but I also encountered a completely different work flow that gave me an excellent overview of how work in a company can be. This experience was therefore a very enriching opportunity in the way that it gave me a broader view of alternative careers to academia.

Integration was the easiest part of my secondment and I enjoyed every single moment with my new colleagues. I found an extremely multicultural dynamic team that gave me the opportunity of trying all the techniques by myself and was available to troubleshoot all the time, giving me the experience of a lifetime. During these troubleshooting moments I found myself not only discussing the protocols I was performing but also my project and what I can do to optimize the data I generate, which in the near future will be very beneficial for my work.

At a personal level, I left GenXPro not only a better researcher but also a better person.

 

 

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska Curie grant agreement n° 641984