At the beginning of my master's program Biomedical Engineering people already talked about where they wanted to go abroad for their internship. I didn’t have a clue at that moment where I wanted to go, except that I would like to go somewhere outside of Europe. When I was introduced to professor Butcher and there was an opportunity to work in his lab at Cornell University, I didn’t want to search for anything else.

Before I started my journey to Ithaca I secured a room at the Graduate Scientific Fraternity named Gamma Alpha. Even though I had lived in a studio on my own for years, I thought it would be fun to live in a big house with other students for my time at Cornell. This was definitely the right choice for me. It is very nice when you travel to the other side of the world on your own that you get to a place where it is easy to make some friends.

Besides my housemates, the introduction to all the PhD students working in professor Butcher's lab was also very nice. The lab at Cornell is much smaller than the one I worked in at the TU/e which makes it much easier to get to know everyone. It made my experience here in Ithaca so much fun. I have been to several lacrosse games between Cornell and other Ivy League universities like Yale and Harvard. But also just going to a park at the Finger Lakes to have a BBQ during the weekends is very nice.

The city itself is mostly based around Cornell. And as long as you like nature, hiking and spotting wild animals, there is more than enough to do in Ithaca. I live at the top of the Cascadilla Gorge and there are a lot of waterfalls on walking distance from where I live. In addition, two very popular trips that students go on during the weekend are taking the bus to either Niagara Falls or New York City. They are of course very different from one another, but both a lot of fun to visit.