Reserapport - KI-student
Lärosäte: Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Utbildningsprogram: Biomedicin
Utbytesprogram: Erasmus
Termin: Vårtermin 13/14

Innan avresa

I have always been of the belief that travel is one of few things that you pay for but end up richer. The professional experiences combined with personal growth is something that is impossible to gain if one chooses to stay in one country. I cant find one bad thing with travelling abroad for studies. Its a perfect combination of fun and work. 

There were a couple of reasons why I chose EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland. First, its a very high ranked university. Its listed as one of Europe (and the world actually) top universities in the area of life science, about the same place as KI. For this reason I felt like I didn't need to downgrade the quality of my education if I was to travel abroad. EPFL have good funding and are well connected with other areas of the life science world. They have established professors with very innovative research going on. They attract promising post-docs partly due to good salary, so the quality of research is very good. I felt like I could be apart of some cutting-edge research over there.
Secondly, I chose EPFL because Switzerland is a perfect country to live in if one wants to explore Europe. Lausanne is situated in the southern part of Switzerland, basically located at the heart of Europe so another country is never more than 2 hours away. Perfect for people who like to travel around.

Not many KI students have previously done their bachelor thesis in EPFL, however I felt that the information from KI and EPFL was more than sufficient. This is also one of the reasons why I chose EPFL; universities within EU often work with the same jurisdiction and therefore the paperwork is less. This takes away a lot of headache when making an application. 

Ankomst och registrering

We arrived one week before the first day in the lab. This is strongly recommended. During this time I got my public transportation card, filled in all the paperwork with the university and announced my arrival at the municipality. Both EPFL and the municipality of Lausanne gave clear instructions of what to do when arriving so that was no problem. Its a french speaking city but people in charge was most often capable of speaking english. The university offered french courses as well (http://langues.epfl.ch/French-modules. )

Ekonomi

Its no need to say that Switzerland is an expensive country to live in. I strongly recommend to save up some money before, even if you're taking full student loans. I wanted to be able to travel around and get to know the country so I worked during the summer and a bit during the winter to save up around 25 000-30 000SEK. This allowed me to take weekend trips and do some traveling, which Im really glad that I did. 

Boende

Accommodation in Lausanne is a bit like Stockholm, difficult. All students are responsible for finding their own accommodation, so I would recommend to start looking early. I was set to travel to Lausanne in January and started doing some early searching in September already. What really help out was the university's own guide of how to find a place tp stay (http://logement.epfl.ch/step-by-step. ) There are some lists that one can sign up to ( http://logement.epfl.ch/op/edit/student-halls) but since there is such a high demand for student housing the waiting lists are often more than 6 months it didn't work out for us. 

Instead, we started looking at the lists of "second-hand appartments" that was available with updates every week (http://lausanne-tourisme.ch/en/hebergement/appartements.html). The lists are often in english but some in french, but with some google translate everything is clear enough. We had the luck to find a good apartment for a ,in swiss terms, reasonable price (14 000 SEK/month) with a wonderful landlord. It could therefore be a good idea to live with someone.

I would recommend to start with the lists of student homes that are available even though the chance of getting one i very slim. I would then move on to the second-hand apartments where the chances are higher, but the prices as well. I would not recommend to try finding apartments on craiglist. We found many frauds and shady deals.

Studier allmänt

Its up to the student to find a place to conduct the bachelor thesis. This was something new to me and it was hard to know where to begin. So I started by looking at the website of EPFL. Its a fairly well designed site were one can find different faculties and the professors for each lab. I used the website to find out more about each lab and what they were doing. I then mailed to professors that caught my interest and explained who I was, why I was interested in their work and that I would like to take part of their work by doing my thesis there. I got many rejections, mostly due to lack of spots or fitting projects, I would therefore recommend not to focus on ONE lab because chances are that they might not have a place for you. Make sure that you have several alternatives.
When finally getting positive response, I had a Skype interview with what was to become my PI and then another skype-talk with my professor. I had to send in my student records and a letter of recommendation (this is not common practice but varies from professor to professor). 

Kurser under utbytet

Kurser motsvarande termin 6 på KI
After being accepted and did my bachelor thesis at their lab for 20 weeks. The project was designed by my PI as a part of her work. My professor was not directly involved with my day to day work but rather a observant of the whole process where as my PI was my "immediate boss". 
It is important to understand that every lab is different. Different professors have different philosophies of how a lab should be run and the best thing to do as a bachelor student is to  understand the environment and adapt as quick as possible. In my lab I started somewhere between 9.30-10.30 and stayed at least until 20.00. This was mostly because it was the schedule of my PI. We had lab-meetings every other week where one was to give updates on the work that had been done until that time. 
I spent A LOT of time in the lab. 8 hours was a minimum. 10 hours was maximum. Be prepared for full commitment. They have high standards at EPFL and expect the same from students from KI.
Besides from all the techniques and methods I learned a lot about group work but also about how I work as an individual. I would strongly recommend to be honest from the beginning with your supervisor. Its very common that there can be miscommunications and the best thing to do is to be on the same page from the start. Sometimes it feels embarrassing asking something for the third time or feeling that certain questions maybe are stupid, but from my experience it is the best way to learn and everyone in the lab understands and are very keen on helping. 
You get the taste of how it would be in the future in real work.

Språk och kultur

Lausanne is a french speaking city. In EPFL however, the majority of the staff is foreigners so english is more common than french. Not being able to speak french will lead to some difficulties but mostly the day to day life is not affected. I dont speak french and didn't learn any french during my stay and I found no difficulty to live there. Our landlord didnt speak one word of english but we managed to communicate via google translate and common sense. You get a lot done with body language and a nice attitude :) 

Lausanne is also a city that is used to international presence so the people of lausanne have adapted accordingly. Other cities in Switzerland are not so well integrated.  

Fritid och sociala aktivteter

As my labwork took most of my time (and energy) I was unfortunately not present in the activities arranged. There are some forums that give updates of whats going on, one of them being EPFL XChange wich caters to all exchanges students present at EPFL (https://www.facebook.com/xchange.esnepfl). 
Most of the activities that I was a part of was things done outside of school.
Here are some recomendations:
Gruyere- kind of the most see city for cheeselovers. We went by car but there is great communication with public transport.
Alps- Never stood on a pair of skies in my life prior to this experience. Something everyone should do. Swizz alps are gorgeous and you have a lots of fun. I went to Villars-Sur-Ollon which is a beautiful resort that is not to expensive compared to other more popular resorts (still expensive though).
Geneve- Go there just to walk around in the city. Make sure to catch the big events such as the international car show (!) and festivals.
Rome- The best thing with Switzerland is that its close to eveyrthing. Book a trip during the easter holiday and enjoy Rome at its finest.
Evian- We took the boat over to Evian (France) and walked around in the little city. There are some great bars and wine shops. There is also a carnival during spring.


Sammanfattning

Switzerland was an amazing experience for me. Sure, it was expensive but in retrospect it was all worth it. I had the chance to be a part of cutting edge research as well as travel to Italy and France. Chances like that do not come around often. Also, it looks pretty good on the CV. Experience is everything in a successful career. 

Reports like these could lead to more questions than you had from the start so if there is anything you would like to know, any quetsions about day to day life, money, future studies etc. do not hesitate to contact me! We could meet over a coffee or just over the matrix.

e-mail: erik.ferreira.alencar@gmail.com
facebook: Erik Ferreira de Alencar