My "mission"

I am not only supposed to continue my master thesis here (and to enjoy California, of course!!), but also try to connect UCSC and Uni Göttingen a little bit, at least starting with SCIPP and the particle physics group of Göttingen. There used to be an official exchange program with the University of California, but after the financial crisis, Berlin was kept as the only German partner university. Now it would be nice to start a new cooperation so that master and PhD students as well as postdocs could go abroad in both directions. I have already talked briefly about that with some SCIPP profs and they seem quite interested in a better exchange.
On Friday, there was a "Study Abroad Fair" on campus where I went although I am currently already abroad ;-) A representative from one of the exchange programs even told me that they were searching for new partner unis.
My flatmates and their friends were a bit surprised to hear how far I could travel with physics through Europe and around the world. They regretted a bit not having taken part in exchange program so far. Well, it is not too late...

Let's see if at the end someone from Santa Cruz will in fact come to Göttingen. I would be happy. If not, I had at least a  good reason to travel to California :-)