On January 14, 2005 Prof. Balcerowicz was visiting research institutes located in Ochota Campus. He visited Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics, International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Institute of Biocybernetics and Biomedical Engineering and The Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology. Meetings with researchers were concluded during discussion "Can we achieve economic growth without supporting research?"

While his short stop at IIMCB, Prof Balcerowicz was visiting two of our laboratories: Laboratory of Bioinformatics and Protein Engineering and Laboratory of Structural Biology Max Planck/PAN. In the Laboratory of Bioinformatics and Protein Engineering Dr. Janusz M. Bujnicki presented his sucessful development of bioinformatics tools and their use for large-scale biological data analysis. At the Laboratory of Structural Biology Dr. Matthias Bochtler explained how recombinant protein expression systems are generated, how proteins are purified and crystalized, how protein structures are solved and used and how the research is funded.

To make the experience practical, Prof. Balcerowicz had a chance to look at the equipment and an atomic model of a protein, presented together with the experimentally derived electron density.