It was a real pleasure to be part of the Hands-On School in Complex Systems organised at ICTP (Trieste, Italy) over the first two weeks of December 2024. In the best tradition of ICTP, the school was geared towards young scientists from developing countries. Together with Sujeet we contributed activities on microbial tracking and phototaxis and did our best with students mentoring. …we also learned quite a lot of new things from the other participants! A big thanks to the organisers and to ICTP for hosting us.