Harvard Retreat 2023

The i-Target 2.0 doctoral program once again sent out five doctoral students to attend this year’s Harvard Immunology Retreat from October 13 to 15, 2023 at Loon Mountain Resort in New Hampshire. This event displays a great chance to present one’s research results in front of an international audience, as well as to listen to the newest immunology research within the Boston Metropolitan Area. On top of that, it is a suitable opportunity to network with other students and professors!

The five students arrived on Thursday evening in Boston, and could stay in a hotel in close vicinity to the Prudential Center. Walking through USA’s oldest city park, the Boston Common, in the morning, one participant swiftly stated: “Seeing this park, you do not realize that you are actually in the United States!”. After a short visit at the MGH main campus (sometimes jokingly called ”Mankind’s Greatest Hospital“), the journey continued with a decelerating walk at the Charles River, until we reached a world-known engineering school just at the shore. Interestingly, Harvard and MIT do not share the same rivalry as the counterparts in Munich, but rather work closely together, such as within the Broad Institute. Also, MD-PhD programs at Harvard are sometimes even done also at MIT laboratories, highlighting the inter-institutional collaboration and its success coming out of it!

In the afternoon, a local Immunology PhD student showed us the campus of Longwood Medical Area, from the building of Harvard Medical School itself with all its history of Nobel Laureates, to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the office of Prof. Kai Wucherpfennig, who by chance was still around for a quick chat! The evening at a local restaurant including a bar brought us new connections to some PhD students, who refer to themselves as G2 (meaning second year of PhD) together with some more European students from France and Sweden.

The trip to Loon Mountain was organized by Bus within 2.5 hours, but one local PhD student thought it is a good idea to just cycle from Boston to Loon Mountain – a solid start! As Europeans, we were cordially welcomed from Professor Shiv Pillai, the head of the program, and two days full of new research, new people and new impressions made its way! The afternoon brake brought us leisure time in the mountains, with its beautiful, colorful fall foliage in mid-October. Here, we also met other German students from local laboratories.

The evenings were packed with poster presentations, also of our research, great live music of senior immunologist (yes, of course also with a lot of Tay Tay music!) as well as with the exclusive live performance of the “Lymphocyte Rap” by Shiv himself (a true legend). As a matter of fact, also other visitors of the Resort (from Chicago) got attracted to the music and joined us to have some fun! Finally, people moved to the after-party in a bigger room at the Resort to just hang out a bit longer.

Back in Boston, some of us moved ahead to the Big Apple, New York City to explore famous sights and activities, some of us have only seen in movies before! All in all, this trip was among the best and most joyful experiences, we could have imagined for our lab time, and it opened our eyes to a complete new world with all of its opportunities in research and way beyond – thank you for organizing this unique journey!

Philipp Jie Müller