We solemnly started our last day, waking up early and prepared for a lot of morning tours. Our first destination for the day was the Floating Farm, an innovative dairy farm design aimed at transitioning to a greener alternative for dairy farming through the reduction of many high-carbon emitting processes. One of the ways the…

Today we were Brian (our chaperone)’s guinea pigs, as he gave us our first ever (for him) tour of Rotterdam, the “Phoenix of Europe.” I don’t know if he was referring to Arizona or the bird, but I don’t think Brian has gone to Arizona so that narrows it down. We started off the tour…

As I discussed in the earlier blog where we went to the Watersnoodsmuseum, the Dutch have been dealing with flooding and water control for centuries. As we visited the Deltaworks early in the morning, we began to learn and observe how they’ve curated a solution that is both sustainable environmentally and socially while protecting them…

Today marked my official tour of TU Delft, and I’m proud to announce that I will be continuing my athletic and academic careers here for the next three years! Jokes aside, today we toured TU Delft, and it was a very enjoyable experience for a few reasons. The first reason was the Greenvillage, a part…

Today, we had free time until 12:45pm, which was extremely relieving and refreshing for my poor sleep schedule the past few days. Matt and I decided that we wanted to go get coffee at a cafe and also walk around in the morning, so we left the hotel around 10am and walked towards a random…

Today was our first professional site visit to one of the many companies we are going to see on our trip, and the first place we went to see was Nouryon, a chemical production company. Nouryon is one of the leading supplies in polymerization materials such as organic peroxides, along with other chemicals. They have…

Our last day in Amsterdam started off with a stop at the Anne Frank House, a testament to the horrible and incomprehensible evils that the many diasporas and the Jewish people had to go through during World War 2. It was emotionally impactful and truly showcased how life could have been then. What is additionally…

Today was an early day truly focused on forms of sustainability and functional engineering. Both the main sights we saw emphasized how to think, test, and engineer sustainable alternatives to regular problems and systems to improve their viability for the future. The first sight was the Royal FloroHolland shipment and auction company, which is the…

Starting the day after finally getting some sleep, we all felt energized to go around the city. Our plan involved a lot of touring, so we had some breakfast around 8:30am and left for the city center around 9:30am. Starting our day off, we met Ian and his wife. His wife owned Cocoa & Spices,…

Landing at 6:00am, jet-lagged and with barely 7 hours of sleep is no easy feat. It takes the brave of heart to be able to fight through it and still explore a city. When we got out of the airport around 7:30am, we met with our king (chaperon), Brian. He had a large tour planned…

Hello, my name is Umur Turgut. I’m a freshman in the Honors College and the Bioengineering Department. I plan on pursuing a cellular engineering degree, and possibly the Conceptual Foundations in Medicine certificate. I was born in Istanbul, Turkey, and moved to Pittsburgh in 2018. I’ve lived in North Oakland for most of my time…