I have enjoyed my time in Beersheba. It is on the edge of the Negev desert. Koby Bortman and his students have been great to work with. I have had a nice little place to stay in, which has been good for keeping up with what is going on in Canada nine time zones away. Writing papers is efficient when there are authors on two different shifts.
The machinery diagnostics lab here has a good approach to research in this area. Relationships between models and experimental results are based on simulations calibrated to the lab apparatus. This gives a good opportunity to assess the model quality against real data. Of course, the simulations don’t always work as hoped. I have spent a lot of time with students staring at graphs trying to figure out what the problem is. To troubleshoot a simulation, we can take several steps: