After attending three different meetings about three different topics – computational oncology and personalized medicine; philosophy of science; biology of complex system and database management – and after meeting quite a lot of different people – bioinformaticians, engineers, medical doctors, biologists, computer scientists, philosophers, I found out the following.

Engineers have so high practical skills that you can tell them (almost) anything, and they will try to find out the best solution for your problems. They are very friendly persons and drinking a glass of wine with you at the end of the meeting never talk about job.

Philosophers are high skill crazy people: don’t speak with them if you are looking for solutions to your problems. They are trained to raise questions and find out problems where you only see solutions. Engage in discussion with them if you want to explore possibilities that you have never thought before. Don’t expect an easy and quick answer. Many philosophers consider their activity not as a job but as an attitude. Some of them take themselves with a pinch of irony, while others hardly smile. Otherwise said, they can still bother you after some glasses of wine with discussions about the (real) existence of the table in front of you.

Biologists are trained to the complexity of life. Don’t show them computational models for the representation of natural phenomena. They will be very skeptical. Being very busy with empirical investigations, they look for solutions to their problems and are (sometimes) less interested in theoretical problems.

A general consideration: Italian researches rock ! They are doing very good stuff. The government, I mean the new government, should seriously take into account the political and economical atmosphere of the universities and research institutions, otherwise the country will lose hundreds of brains.

Now, the right question is: What the hell am I doing in three different conferences about three completely different topics?

That’s a good point.