This is the beginning of a semi-regular blog about my experiences during my summer doing research with the Media Lab at LMU Munich. I’ll probably end up posting one of these each Friday, but for the first week so much is happening it warrants an extra post or two.

We landed in Munich on Saturday and after a long and exhausting journey dragged ourselves into the lovely little apartment they got for us. Spent the weekend recovering from jet lag, which I am still suffering from today, though I am feeling much better and expect I’ll be fully recovered by tomorrow.

This morning the whole IRS crew commuted together to the lab space. It was great arriving at the office and seeing all the familiar faces I missed from CHI 2023. I met up with Florian Bemmann, who I will be working with, and chatted about research possibilities for the summer. So far it looks like we might be doing something around social media platform design for preventing the spread of extremist content. More updates as these ideas develop but it seems like it will be an great collaboration!

After lunch we were shown around the lab space, and this building is amazing. The lab has access to a wood shop, 3d printers, laser cutter, soundproofed podcasting room, filming studio complete with green screen, multiple VR setups, and a robot assisted kitchen with a giant robotic arm they’re working on to support in various tasks… and even more I’m forgetting I’m sure. None of it really relevant to the kind of research I do, but awesome all the same.

Despite my exhaustion I’ve had a productive first day brainstorming preliminary ideas for our study over the summer and reading literature that might be relevant. I am beyond excited to get started!