Philipp Walch

My name is Philipp Walch and I'm a high-school graduate from the small town Walldürn. I attended Burghardt Gymnasium in Buchen, where I chose Mathematics, German, English, French and Chemistry as main subjects. After having finished my civil service at the local nursing home, I am going to study Life Science at the university of Constance.

My fields of interest, as far as the life sciences are concerned, are organic chemistry, biochemistry and molecular biology. Therefore I'd like to achieve an internship at the school of medicine at the University of Stanford. The faculties chemistry and biochemistry propose a lot of great opportunities and thus I have applied there.

In the Life Science Lab, I participated in the working groups of philosophy, chemistry, scientific English and zoology, of which I am also mentor.

Besides natural sciences, I love playing chess in my free time. And further things I love to do are playing the piano, singing, riding my bike, swimming, skiing, reading and debating. Therefore I have participated in the Senior League of the German Debating Society for several years and will now manage a Debating Club at my former school.

During the International Science Academy I hope to get new experiences in working in a lab. This does not only contain the scientific knowledge that I will need in my further professional life, but also the methodical basis of work in a laboratory.

The lab where I want to participate in, the one of Suzanne Pfeffer, would offer me a great opportunity to do this. The lab of Mrs. Pfeffer is engaged in research concerning the transport of receptors between membrane compartments in cells. Rab GTPases are of major importance in this topic as they regulate the process by catalyzing the formation of transport vesicles and their docking. Besides the Golgi complex and its function are a part of their filed of interest.

Therefore the group of Mrs. Pfeffer tries to provide precise information about the specific proteins, their role and their structure. The information received by research helps to understand serious diseases such as cancer, diabetes, heart diseases and neurological dysfunctions. With the knowledge won, further research, how to counteract those diseases is possible.

Mrs. Pfeffer also published several papers. The newest one of the 72 existing is about “Membrane Traffic”, which is her recent research topic. Others, containing information about the Rab GTPases show that she is a real expert in that topic. Therefore I would like to spend my internship in her laboratory.

If any of you should have questions about what I will do in San Francisco, please don't hesitate to contact me. My e- mail address is:

philipp (dot) walch (at) web (dot) de

I'm looking forward to talking to anyone who is interested.