After another great breakfast, we headed to the school of engineering once again. We had a lively presentation on the research happening in the school. The project is a balance machine meant to help stroke victims recover and measure their balance more accurately on a scale. The prototype was made complete in-house. It only took 7 years for their team to think of the idea to get almost to the clinical stage of using their device. After that, Professor Borovetz gave a presentation on Pittsburgh and his research he has been conducting at Pitt for the past 23 years! The prototype is a pediatric heart pump that is the size of a double-A battery. He decided to work on it, as most companies have no interest in working in the pediatric heart industry, as there is a lot less money. It’s interesting to see how, because children grow, if they don’t get a transplant in time, they have to vary the pump rate and/or size. He also presented on heart failures and transplants as a whole. We learned how there were around 100,000 hand and heart transplants in a certain time period, and 10,000 occurred in Spain. They actually occurred in one of the hospitals in Bilbao. It was overall a wonderful presentation!

We then got to visit the Guggenheim Museum, the main attraction of Bilbao and the structure responsible for bringing the city back to life. We saw many great exhibits; however, the most baffling one besides the building itself was a series of short films created to incite discomfort in its watchers. It was very successful in this effect.