Tomasz Puzyn (UG) in National Institute for Environmetal Studies (NIES) in Tsukuba

Between 10 and 26 of February I was visiting National Institute for Environmental Studies in Tsukuba (Japan).

The group led by Prof. Seishiro Hirano is involved in WP2: Carrying out experiments to produce necessary (missing) data for nanoparticles. The visit has been conducted within BRIDGE I: Collaboration between developers of computational and empirical methods for risk assessment. During a general meeting and personal discussions we have exchanged information on the progress in the development of computational and experimental methods within ^NanoBRIDGES project. We have discussed further directions of the experiments to ensure that data produced by the experimental team would be useful to develop computational (Nano-QSAR) models. On the other hand, I gained the basic knowledge on the origin of the data. I learned how the data were produced step-by-step and what eventual problems originating from the experiments that have a potential impact on the computations would be.

Although the visit was very short, it gave me an idea on the origin of experimental data that we are dealing with. This was my first experience of visiting toxicological laboratory and to observe, how the experiments are performed. In addition, I got new ideas for possible calculation of descriptors of nanostructure based on the results from confocal microscopy.