Greetings from Poznan

This is just by way of an apology for my relative silence on PPS blogs and forums lately.

I am half way through two weeks' teaching at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland, funded by a grant to Birkbeck through the EU Erasmus programme (formerly known as Socrates) which funds student and lecturer exchanges between EU countries (and some others). I am teaching a two-week course on bioinformatics mostly, this year, to postgraduate Physics students but I have also taught in other departments.

I have known my host here, Professor Mariusz Jaskolski, since we were both working in the same lab in the States, NCI Frederick, in the early 90's. Mariusz was involved in some of the early work on the structure of HIV protease which is covered extensively in the PPS course. Since then he has gone on to found the first X-ray crystallography group in central-eastern Europe and to solve the structures of viral integrases, asparaginases and others... and many of his students, and others at AMU, have taken PPS and/or other distance learning courses from Birkbeck.

Normal service will be resumed next Monday.