Post date: Jul. 20, 2019 11:30:40 PM

I updating this blog after the last crazy weeks at MIT and a couple of weeks of vacation back to Italy.

In the last weeks in US I tried to close most of the things I was working on in the last period. It was not easy and I wish I had more time. Now the outgoing phase of my project is finished. I am very glad to had this possibility. It was a great life and work experience. Sometimes I had hard times, but this happens everywhere I guess. I am very thankful to my colleagues and my supervisor that supported me the whole time. I brought back with me a lot of fantastic experiences and I learned so much.

Settling down back to Italy was not easy. I had to care about a lot of things also in the lab. Several of the setups I used to work with, needed (and some still need) maintenance and re-calibration. For this reason the first month went mostly on these troubles and also on some bureaucracy related to my project.

Apart from this I put a lot of time on the preparation of the two lectures I gave at the Enrico Fermi - Advances in Thermoelectricity: Foundational Issues Materials, and Nanotechnology summer school. It was a great honor to be include on a such outstanding group of professors. I also learned a lot of things while following the talks of the other lecturers, and this was very useful. The school was placed on Varenna in the amazing framework of Como lake. I breathed a wonderful atmosphere among students and professors, the good food, and the amazing landscape. My lectures were focused on solar thermoelectric and hybrid harvesters, and I saw a great interests of both the students and the other lecturers.

Now I still have a couple of weeks before the summer closing of my department. I have a couple of depositions and some measurements to perform, but are mainly intended to systems calibration and check. In this way I should be ready to be back on track after the closing. I will use this break to plan the rest of the project, and to start looking around for the future.