... is kinda cool.
It is the Max-Planck-Institute for Research on Collective Goods I'm interning at. It's an interdisciplinary group of lawyers, economists and psychologists. Actually, it's three (sub-)groups and I'm, of course, with the psychologists. They are called Intuitive Experts.
The Max-Planck-Intitute has so much money! The Intuitive Experts have a mobile lab which is set up every once in a while, when it is needed. That is, different to most university labs, they do not do their experiments all the time, but rather once in a week or every other week for a whole day. The mobile lab has 12 booths -- and also 12 laptops. That's crazily much: in Göttingen the Cognitive and Decision Sciences Lab had about 5 experimental computers (I think) and the Concepts and Cognition Lab at Berkeley had 2. So just in case anyone wants to do research in Germany: go for a MPI instead of any university.
Also, the whole thing is located in a beautiful villa with a luxurious garden (I'll post photos soon). We have ducks, too. ;-)
What I'm actually doing, I'll better tell you some other time. But they do really care and do not only give us boring tasks, but try to let us do stuff, we'll actually profit from, too. I'm saying "we", because we are two interns. And apparently the first ones ever. There are also some stories about that...
So, I'm really happy and it's so much better than I expected. It's really exhausting, too, but rather for the commuting reason, you already know about. I'll tell you more soon!
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
AND THEN??? How does it continue? This is the question children ask when they don't want you to stop reading to them. So this blog is just about how 'it' continues after I left California. I do not promise that the following will be any interesting, actually I can almost promise that it won't. But it's the best means I can think of to keep in touch with you all! So please, do use the comment function as much as you can and write me back!
2 comments:
Hey Christina --
Just got your email. I'm shocked -- where does MPI get all its money? They have a much larger lab than us, and they're not even using it a lot of the time? *Crazy*! Glad things are going well for you.
Best,
Aaron
Hey Aaron, so cool to hear from you! When is your job starting -- has it already begun? Please let me know how it is going!
The MPI:
"The Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e. V. (abbreviated MPG, meaning Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science) is an independent German non-profit research organization funded by the federal and state governments." [...]
"Funding is provided predominantly from federal and state sources, but also from research and license fees and donations." [...]
"The institutes have a total staff of approx. 12,300 permanent employees, including 4,200 scientists, plus around 9000 non-tenured scientists and guests. Their budget for 2006 was about 1.4 billion euro, with 84% from state and federal funds.
Apart from the research departments, the society funds a number of Independent Junior Research Groups and several International Max Planck Research Schools (43 at the end of 2005)." [...]
Taken from, of course, Wikipedia.
I read you soon! ;-)
Christina
Post a Comment