Knoxville and Gavrilets' lab

The reason I came to Knoxville was to visit Sergey's Gavrilets lab for theoretical evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee. Sergey is one of the leaders in the field and it was a very interesting visit.

My colleague from Monash, Suzanne, spent some time at Sergey's lab and the initial plan was to visit the place while she was there. Unfortunately, due to unexpected circumstances outside our control she had to leave just a few days before I arrived. Luckily, one of the PhD students from the lab was kind enough to accommodate me. Ivan and I had a pretty good time over the few days I was there and I am looking forward to the day when he gets a chance for a return visit in Melbourne.

While Knoxville did not appear as a prime location for living, the lab made an amazing impression. There are people from biology, mathematics and computer science working very close together in a rare event of real cross-disciplinary collaboration. This makes a very inspiring working environment and it was a pity I could not spend a little more time there.

I gave a talk about my Holey Fitness Landscapes work to a little but very interested audience and received more feedback than ever before. It was particularly interesting as the audience was predominantly biological, which is different to the more computer science biased audience who normally come to my talks. Clearly, I lack a proper biological perspective myself and I am looking forward to collaborate with the people I met in Knoxville in future.

After a late night at a local pub and having made a few new friends I was very pleased with my visit in Knoxville, but I was also looking to go to good old Europe soon. But first, I had a three days stopover in Chicago...

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