"It is sometime now since Prof. Michael Neumaier and myself visited you in San Luis Potosi in May 2015 to give the workshop on the topic 'Translational Medical Research'. As you know, we now have a formal cooperation agreement in place between our universities, and we look forward to continuing working with you in the future, for example through accepting students from your university to join us in Germany as part of our masters program."

"When we visited you in Mexico, we were greatly impressed by what you have achieved in your masters program, often with relatively limited resources. Your students are clearly highly motivated and enthusiastic. I remember well some of the lively discussions we had with the students during the poster session when we discussed their work, as well as their engagement and hard work during the workshop sessions. Both Prof. Neumaier and I were really excited by the progress you and your colleagues have already made in implementing the principles in translational medical research into your teaching activities."

"We know that the scientific production of your department is highquality and have cooperated in other fields (as we received one of your students as a fellow researcher).

We hope that this relation grows within future common projects come and knowledge is produced in common.

We are deeply interested in international cooperation and networking. Therefore, it is important for our department to reinforce our common research fields."

"Your hospitality was exemplary, although I have come to expect none les [sic] from my Mexican colleagues. More important, I found no difficulty in engaging with members of the faculty and students, both in the context of the workshops and lectures, wich were well-attended, and where audience was very actively following the discussion, even though it was, of course, in English, and in informal conversations.

What I found a real eye-opener was the quality of the poster presentations. I am accustomed to seeing posters in my own department where studies are performed wich use rigorous methodology (RCT of course) to adress often mundane questions that are inadequately grounded in theory, biological or otherwise.

By contrast, I was astonished to see both the depth and rigour of the questions asked by students and the diversity of methodological approaches they used. The quality was clearly top class by any standard. While McMaster has an international reputation, I can honestly say that the quality I saw in SLP was, in every way, the equal to what I see in my own institution."