As a PhD student at Frank Bremmer’s lab in Marburg I had the pleasure to enjoy a total of 8 months at Monash University in Melbourne: six months from September 2018 through April 2019 and two months in early 2020.

During that time, under supervision by Adam Morris, I developed an experimental setup that allowed me to investigate visuomotor processing of simulated self-motion in virtual reality. I was provided a lab space to develop and test the setup and to run my first experiments on it. I felt warmly welcomed at the department, everyone in the lab was highly supportive and provided me with their expertise. At Monash, I benefitted not only from weekly seminars within the department where we discussed state-of-the-art research and where I had the opportunity to present and discuss my own projects, but also from frequent visits of notable scientists who gave insight into their work and helped me to extend my (neuro-)scientific horizon. My stay at Monash laid the foundation for three collaborative publications that eventually comprised my doctoral thesis.

On the non-scientific side, I could happily confirm that Melbourne is one of the most livable cities in the world! I greatly enjoyed its music and art scenes and the huge diversity of international food. Apart from that, beautiful nature with abundant wildlife is just around the corner. People were super friendly, and it was a breeze to connect and make new friends!

Would come again 