After another year of a successful research exchange done by the students of the Johanna-Wittum-School, we are hoping for more chances and opportunities in the future to send interested, motivated and qualified students to other countries to research, meet interesting people and acquire knowledge about science, research and different languages.
This year from the 16th of August to the 27th of September, the Johanna Wittum School in Pforzheim once again had the opportunity to take three students to South Carolina, a state in the USA, where they could complete a research internship at the Pee Dee Research and Education Center, a faculty of Clemson University in the state of South Carolina. While the two students Minh Lai and Nico Biesinger worked on studying a wheat introgression line to identify genotypes with reduced immunogenicity, the student Lilian Lukács studied peanut genotypes that were identified to be reduced in the amount of allergens due to the breeding of different peanut types. Besides working in the lab every day, Nico Biesinger also managed to design a program that could facilitate work in the laboratory. Needless to say, the three German students were very proud when they were finally able to present the results of their internship to an audience on the day of the final presentation.
In addition to working in the laboratory, which made up a large part of their time in the USA, the young adults explored the state of South Carolina and made international contacts and friendships that are likely to last a lifetime. According to the three students, it is essential to find friends who share the same interests and hobbies. To find this kind of friends was very easy, because the students were staying on the campus of the partner school “Governor’s School For Science And Mathematics “, were they could find many students of their age who are interested in science and mathematics. Hence, saying goodbye to their new friends was not an easy thing to do for the three students.