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Good evening, everyone.
We are happy and honored to speak on behalf of the summer school participants. It is a great opportunity to reflect on our experiences here and indeed express our gratitude to everyone who contributed to its creation. Heraclitus said that one could not step twice into the same river. Jason and I were lucky not only to participate in the Bio-X Summer School twice, but also visit Ephesus last year, where Heraclitus was from (which is ironically part of Turkey now). This year Dr. Akay brought together incredibly diverse and equally bright group of the participants and we are happy to be here. Each participant greatly contributed to making Summer School such a unique experience by asking insightful questions and bringing so many unique perspectives. Last night we realized that we have people speaking more than 10 languages, and it has been a privilege to get to know everyone and we hope to stay in touch. This year our speakers were truly inspiring showing that impactful work can be done outside of academia. Handling big data has become a necessity across all fields, our speakers have provided cutting edge insight into how we are beginning to approach these new challenges with the far reaching implications of Google''s neural networks we are truly entering a new era in automation and customization of patient care. We wanted to especially thank Dr. David Fenstermacher for giving us appreciation of what a herculean task is to deal with poorly collected data and making us think how to be smarter about it. Dr. Jack Ming Po for his absolutely thrilling talks on research conducted by Google. It was truly eye-opening to learn how big data not only gives new dimensions to science, but becomes a new science on its own. Dr. Colin Brenan drawing for us the full path from a discovery to the market and challenging us to think as an entrepreneur. Dr. Utkan Demirci for sharing with us his incredibly elegant research on rare cell isolation and microfluidic approach to tackle fertility issues. It is hard to imagine more gratifying thing then knowing what a tremendous difference your technology made for thousands of families. Huge thanks to our hosts - the Orthodox Academy of Crete for hosting us here and especially to Yanas for the fantastic food and wine making the meals overlooking the Greek islands even more memorable>
In the age when we can ask Google virtually about everything, real science no longer is only happening when we are in the lab or at our laptops. Things like critical yet open mind, spirit of collaboration and genuine engagement into the issues of our society are becoming absolutely crucial for great science, it is a 100% team sport now. The Summer School has became for us a model of an ideal collaborative environment, which we will be striving to reproduce, maintain and foster through our careers.
Lastly we thank the Akays for making each end every one of us feel like part of their family and providing a one of a kind environment to expand and grow.
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