Monday started bright and early with a 7:30 am breakfast before we headed to Nicosia for the last time. Here, we headed to the Blue Amphitheater (one thing of interest to note, they don’t use room numbers here, but rather themed names based on the corridor; for example, colors or philosophers) to begin our first of three lectures.

The first lecture focused on blockchain and cryptocurrency. The University of Nicosia is the world leader in education on these topics and was the first university to offer classes on the subject. It was cool to be able to hear about this from the best in the field, and the lecture was given by the CEO of the university which was quite surprising. He taught us about the difference between centralized services, such as Twitter, which must be held accountable for their users, and decentralized services, such as email, which act as a digital public commons. He explained that some digital activities are better implemented in a decentralized database, and blockchain and cryptocurrency fall into this sphere. We were then blessed by coffee because Jodi thought we’d need energy, so they rolled in a cart of our coffee orders between lectures which was greatly appreciated.

We then had two more lectures on supply chain forecasting and data science before we left UNIC for the last time. From there we went to the research center’s pharmacy lab for some demos and discussion, where we were split into two groups to rotate through three different rooms. My group first got to learn about how they create pill tablets, getting a close-up view of the machinery as it filled, stamped, and cut them. We learned that various factors impact whether or not a pill can be sent to market, such as the hardness of the mixture and the lubrication of the device. It was interesting to see how many pills they make on a daily basis only to not use them. From there, we moved to the testing center to see how they ensure the quality of their medication. This was fascinating to see as pharmaceutical chemistry is a major interest of mine. We watched as the scientist performed gas and liquid chromatography to determine the content of the pills and then got to see a report on this. The last room was an organic chemistry lab where the scientist taught us about polymers and proteins and how they use scorpion venom and sea cucumbers for medications such as Ozempic and anti-wrinkle care. He then passed around some frozen scorpions which was interesting to see.

After leaving Nicosia, we headed back to Limassol. Being tired from the long day, a few of us enjoyed a quick dinner and then headed to bed early.