“Halox” is a term used to describe the informal cooperation between the universities of Halle and Oxford. From the outset, the idea was also to engage in joint projects and give students the opportunity to spend extended research stays at the other university. This recently became a reality for three young researchers from Halle – a medical student and two biochemists – when they took the plunge and relocated to the prestigious British university in mid-2015. “It was fantastic, but also a lot of hard work,” says Marion Bermúdez-Sasso of her three-month stay in Oxford. She says she gained a lot of theoretical and practical know­ledge, particularly about her own research focus, new methods of DNA analysis, so called next-gene­ration sequencing.

For biochemistry student Michaela Reissland it was the first research stay outside of Germany. ­“Oxford is very impressive, and a beautiful city,” she says. She found her own post in the Department of ­Oncology, where she conducted experiments with human cell cultures. “I was already familiar with the methods, but I had only worked with plant cell cultures up until then,” says Michaela Reissland, who is in the second year of her Master’s degree.