In grad school I worked on IceCube which is a neutrino telescope at the South Pole. The detector is an array of photomultiplier tubes embedded in the ice underneath the Pole. At the time I was mostly working on electronic devices for calibration and measuring ash layers in the ice.

When we got accepted to YC I thought I was going to finish my PhD and work on the startup at the same time (ha!) so I kept working on the experiment. I went down to Pole for a month before YC to deploy the devices I was working on. While I was there I also worked on Octopart around the clock. Sam was actually in Argentina at the time so we would both log into our server in Berkeley to ychat when the satellite link was up. Somehow the timing worked out really well and I flew back from the Pole just in time for the first YC dinner.

Not the entire time. Andres was installing a sensor a mile beneath the water surface (if my memory is right; writing this from a mobile phone without the book on me). That was part of his research, I believe most of his time was spent in his grad student office.