Category: duke Page 2 of 21

教授简介：

Jörn Coers, PhD，Assistant Professor
Program: Molecular Genetics & microbiology
field of research:interferon (IFN)-stimulated host defense mechanisms against intracellular bacterial pathogens such asChlamydia trachomatis and Legionella pneumophila.
Introductory page: http://mgm.duke.edu/faculty/coers/index.htm

 

编者：康东，Molecular Genetics and Microbiology， PHD

 

DCSSA: You have been in the field of bacteria field for a fairly long time. Could you tell me which part of it do you feel very attractive so that you chose bacterial pathogenesis as your research subject?

 

Professor: I never really wanted to study bacteria at first. Actually, I wanted to study neurobiology. At the time, there was a master exchange program in Germany at the University of Konstanz in which you can go to the New York State University at Stony Brook. I managed to get in this competitive program which allowed me to do my first year of Ph.D. there in New York. I asked people there what they were good for, and they said that they have really good people working on bacterial pathogenesis and that was how I first decided to go into the field. It is only for a year so I joined the lab led by Craig Roy in bacteria pathogenesis. I felt attractive to the field as soon as I started my work because it really combines a lot of different things which is fascinating- how the bacteria works, of course, but also how the host cells work. And it all comes to the cool co-evolution- for example, how bacteria evade immune-response and live in the host cells and how host cells respond to the infection of microbes. So basically, you study biology, bacteriology, immunology and evolution. So it really combines all fields which is very exciting.

 

DCSSA: You first publication was in 1999 in Nature Cell Biology, demonstrating that the secretion system of legionella was very crucial to evade host response. And then you moved on to Yale University for another year. How did this kind of interdisciplinary education benefit you?

 

Professor: That was a unique situation. When I was in Germany, I got the chance to go to New York State University for a year and I had a great time there. I guess I was lucky because people sometimes cannot believe that I got so much data in only one year, especially when I was not that experienced. After my first year, Craig Roy got an offer from Yale University and offered to cover my expense for another year. So I just came to Yale. It is very unusual case but I think we should have more of this kind of programs which fostered exchanges from different universities. For my case, I think it is chance and luck. I published two papers there, one being on Nature Cell Biology, as I said I was very lucky there.

 

DCSSA: it worked out for you as you first came to US from Germany, and then from NY state to Yale.

 

Professor: It is good have to continuity though. Although I was officially affiliated to Konstanz in Germany, for 2 and ½ years I stayed at the same lab.

 

DCSSA: After you finished your master’s degree, you went back to Germany and switched your topic on cytokines and blood cells- precursor of platelets, megakaryocyte. Could you tell me the reason you changed your topic?

 

Professor: It was a hard decision. Craig Roy this time suggested that I apply for the Ph.D. degree at Yale, and I considered it. There were a couple of reasons. I was spoiled at the time, because I already had two papers. I really liked what I was doing at the time, but I really liked to branch out and got exposed to other things. And I was sure at the time that I wanted to do mouse genetics. I thought in vivo would be very important for any research whatever I ended up doing. So I wanted to do research using mouse genetics and in vivo model and address a simple but interesting question. The question I was interested in when I browsed through the literature was how cytokines regulates the fate of cells. And there were at the time two opposing hypotheses in which one was that cytokines instruct the cells to undergo certain cell fate decisions. The other hypothesis was that cytokines permitted the certain cells which can survive, this is called permissive model. The lab I joined just published some seminal papers before I came in. I have to say that I did not contribute much to this question, though. I ended up building a mouse model of pre-leukemia disease, which is very rewarding because now we build a mouse model for human disease to study. I still like to use mouse in vivo model in my own lab to recapitulate what is happening in human bodies. So those were the two reasons I changed my subject: A, I want to study mouse genetics; B, I want to address a simple question- which was more difficult than I expected.

 

DCSSA: So, when you came back later in your field of bacterial pathogenesis, you definitely felt much more confident because now you have much hands-on in vivo experience.

 

Professor: that is right.

 

DCSSA: in your Ph.D. life, you moved back to Germany and again you were affiliated to two universities?

 

Professor: No, the thing is that- my lab moved again, from Germany to Switzerland. These things happen. My PI at the time got an offer from Switzerland which he could not pass on- a chair position, so after 2 and ½ half years, we moved to Switzerland and I got my Ph.D. degree in Switzerland not in Germany.

 

DCSSA: does the relocation of the labs happen a lot in Switzerland and Germany? Because I thought lab should always be in the same place.

Professor: No, it was just me. It was just good luck and bad luck depending on how you look at it. But generally I agree with you, that relocation of a lab is usually disruptive because it should always be in the same place, especially when the lab has moved recently. When I joined the lab in Germany, I didn’t expect they would move again because It has already moved from Switzerland. It was disruptive and basically added 1 year to my Ph.D. graduation. But you know these things happen, and you have to deal with this kind of obstacles. You can never completely avoid such things.

 

DCSSA: So was moving around your most difficult moment? Or you have other moments that you feel very difficult?

 

Professor: So the labs underwent a lot of changes. First, there was big turn-over in people, and PI decided to move to a new field of stem cells–because then it became clear that cytokines give permissive signals for cells to grow. So the question became what the cytokines are to determine certain progenitor cells to became neutrophils or thrombocytes or other cells. We jumped into the field and dabbling in it but it really didn’t work because we didn’t have the expertise. So at the time a number of new graduate student and post-docs worked on the project. So my first two years of Ph.D. was very successful and I came across 2 years when nothing worked. It was not due to my lack of effort, but it was just that we didn’t have the correct approach to the problems and I was extremely frustrated. I had to deal with this, not to get discouraged. And later I decided that I pick up another project, and that was the deciding moment. This kind of experience in the long run is very important, because it taught me to be much more humble, and make me think about my research strategy. So as now I am setting my own lab, I am also thinking of direct research which will be fruitful, I hope.

 

DCSSA: and could you tell me your most successful moment?

 

Professor: simply when things worked out. Especially in the case of transgenic mice. We made a transgenic mouse and found out that it expressed the gene. But more gratifying is that it showed a complicated phenotype which we could not explain in the beginning but we made up a hypothesis and test it and the result was the same as we suspected. So that was the most gratifying moment.

 

DCSSA: In your opinion, as you progress from a graduate student to a post-doc and to an assistant professor here at Duke, what kind of properties did you obtain at each step of your career?

 

Professor: that is a great question. First, you acquire your technical skills. They are all important, but you can compress time to graduation to a much shorter time if it is only for techniques. And another thing is thinking and problem-solving. That is something at least for me requires a lot of efforts and failure to figure out the right approach. The last thing I think is how I can integrate my academic to my real life, how I deal with obstacles and failures. And also How I deal with conflicts with other people in the lab. A lab is very social place where you get fascinated about science and you may spend 12-14 hours a day at certain times. It is a very integral part of your life, and I think the important part is that even if something doesn’t go well, you are not completely crushed. So dealing with frustration is something that some naturally have and others have to acquire. And PIs I have been worked with—I have had 4 different PIs and I all learned different things from each of them. If you think about science it is very interesting in that all different kinds of character types can be very successful. So you meet different people and they have something that you can learn from.

 

DCSSA: And when you applied to duke for a faculty position, what kind of properties do you think make Duke hire you instead of other post-docs?

 

Professor: another excellent question! You should ask the hiring committee. Now that I paid more attention to people who came into my office, I began to understand their standards. Everybody that has been provided with a job interview must have very strong CV; otherwise you won’t get invited. And a strong recommendation letter from your PI is also absolutely very critical. So what the people are looking for is: A, the research and subject, of course, of the person is proposing to do. This is very important, because people want to find out if your research is interesting and fundable. Is it some research that can get you an NIH funding? And then they also look at you in person. Is this person going to be a good colleague? Is he willing to collaborate, share resources? Is he someone I want to do my project with and have some input when I ask him to view my grant proposal or something else. So there are the criteria, when it comes down to the interview, (here for two days), everything is important. But Giving a job talk is very important, because here you have to explain science, which is an important factor, and present your future of your work. And then every single meeting counts because people want to see the interviewees they are about to hire. Is he a person you want to interact for many years actually? So people put a lot of thoughts into that. As to the reason why I was picked other than others, I don’t know. (laugh) I assume that I fulfilled some of these criteria.

 

DCSSA: As your lab is expanding, and if a Chinese applicant wants to join your lab, what kind of properties are you looking for in the applicants apart from the language abilities? Sometimes Chinese students cannot speak very good English.

 

Professor: you are definitely raising a good point. Actually many Chinese students have limitations on English, and we don’t have a chance to meet them in person, because in that case it will be way too expensive to have them fly all over the world. So for these reasons, the criteria might come to the test scores, recommendation letters and experience in the lab. The criteria for international students are way more demanding than the American students. For American students we actually have the chance to bring them to Duke to interview them and judge them and evaluate them right here. Obviously you have to have good test scores, you have to get strong recommendation letters and you should to have lab experience and we will have a Skype interview and make sure the video works. And be prepared. It is not necessarily easy to get into. As an international student, it is actually very hard to get in.

 

DCSSA: and for the future students that are in your lab, what kind of expectations do you have towards them when they are done with their Ph.D. under your mentoring for 4 or 5 years?

Professor: So in the old days, Ph.D. students are often trained for work in academia. And in these days it is not true anymore; students often also consider and go for jobs in industry. Or even jobs in policy and so forth. The reason for being a Ph.D. student if you are not going to stay in academia is to acquire certain skill sets: your ability to understand and communicate in science; and your ability to be a critical thinker; and make people understand what the truth is instead of what you believe. I think after going through my lab, I want them at the end of the day can call themselves scientists, and get good publication which will be reflected on the job market and make them easier to look for a job. So I hope my students to have a successful career they choose to do even if they don’t go to academia.

 

DCSSA: you actually have indirectly answered some of my next question.  There is a saying that only 5-10 percent of current Ph.D. students can make it to the level of assistant professors and all the others go into the industry.

Professor: things may change 10 years from now because you might have that preferred option because science can move into the direction where certain things can only be accomplished in industry projects. And also as you know, industry also pays better—that is not something that is insignificant. So whatever you want to be.

 

DCSSA: in your case, have you ever considered another option other than being a professor?

 

Professor: I tried to consider that. I think it is a healthy exercise to always think something else. But actually once I got hooked, when I was doing experiment all day long in Craig Roy’s lab, I felt like I always want to do this. And I always want to work under the framework of independence, which means that at least in some levels you can pursue anything you find is interesting. And also you have to persuade others to give money on this. But still it is still something you can only get in academic settings not other settings. And I also want to do research which cuts down paperwork compared to a patent lawyer. I always want to do research and I always want to have independence. And at most time, it means that I want to do academic research.

 

DCSSA: So those are the two reasons that make you make this career decision.

 

Professor: That is correct, but what you want is not necessarily what you get. As I told you for as long as 2 years I don’t have any result. As an alternative plan to make sure that your life doesn’t end if you don’t this particular job. I think I am very fortunate to get what I wanted. And sometimes when I write too much grants I will always remind myself of how fortunate I am.

 

DCSSA: How do you like your life as a professor? Apart from the fact you have to manage your lab, there are a lot of annoying things, for example the grant proposals?

Professor: it is a work of progress, I guess. You are never trained properly for this job. Throughout these years as a post-doc, you are most trained as a scientist. You are trained like a scientist and plan experiment accordingly and write papers. At some degree, you are already trained to write grants so forth, if you have a mentor who helped you and trained you. But you are never trained to run an enterprise, which is basically this is a small business. And you can learning something through your mistakes. So I guese I just I try to be organized. I only have certain time of a day, so it is very important to do management. And I also always think for the people who are in my labs, what is beneficial for them, because I always think that I can only be successful if my lab is successful and keep the people in my lab happy. So time management and prioritizing are two very important for me to be a professor. And I think having a good communication with my people in the lab is also very important.

 

DCSSA: As you mention, time management is very important. As far as I am concerned, there are some labs which set up very strict time rules, for example you have to be in the lab from 9 to 9. And for others many people just come in 9 and leave at 5. So did you ever experience something like that in your Ph.D?

 

Professor: I think I never experienced strict rules. They all expect you to be in core hours. That makes sense, because you know the facilities are only open during the core time and you can communicate with other people in the lab and all the meetings and seminars are. So you should definitely be there for core hours. But you know if anyone is excited about science, he will spend a lot of time in the lab. But you cannot force people. But trust me every PI knows exactly what is going on in your project and if you are excited about the project, who is committed and who is not. If I have to push somebody to do their work they should be doing, then I think it is already a problem either because he is frustrated or he does not like doing science. So if it is in the early Ph.D., he may as well consider something else. I think science is really something you must have a calling for and you will find yourself being excited. And you will find yourself spending a lot of time doing research.

 

DCSSA: Working as a professor also is not a Nine-five job. How do you adjust your work with your family?

 

Professor: So I come in every day from 9 to 6 and after 6 I leave with my wife and pick up my daughter from daycare. After dinner, I will do a lot of work in front of the computer, sending e-mails, because nowadays a lot of my work is not experiment. And I also do certain amount of work at weekends. Actually that is almost routine—I always do some work every weekend. And I do think it is important to keep the balance; I do play soccer. I think it is good to have some physical exercise to keep you healthy. So it is important to keep it balance; work hard but keep balance.

 

DCSSA: As my last question, this lab has just started, and 5 or 10 years from now, what kind of lab do you want your lab would be? is it better it is a post-doc lab or small graduate student lab?

 

Professor: it all depends on the funding now. I can tell you what kind of lab I would like to have 5 or 10 years from now. I like my lab size to the size of a soccer team:  11 players. I think it would be good mix for most team to post-docs and Ph.D. students with equal numbers and technicians. That would be ideal. We are having right now two undergrad in my lab; I think it is important to train the next generation of scientist early and chance to get some experience and see if this is something they like to do. And I would even bring in some high school students. It is always fun to see the students coming in; even if it is the post-docs who train students.

 

 

由于教授希望匿名进行采访，所以不便于提供教授信息。

编者：冼殷，ECE， PHD

 

Question 1: There are a lot of students applying to Duke ECE PhD program every year, what quality of the applicants do you place the most importance? Is it GPA, research experience or something else?

Answer: Very good questions. But I don’t know how to answer the first one. I am happy if they are interested in my research topic. When I recruit students, I will look carefully at the application’s material, including recommendations letters, GPA, GRE, statement of purpose and CV.  I think the recommendations letters and their academic goal are most important. From the recommendations letters, you can tell what kind of person the applicant is. And it is interesting to know the students’ academic goal. You know, people with high GPA do not necessarily mean that they can do their research well, although they know how to complete their classes’ assignments well. Students with lower GPA may do their research better. However, if their GPA is like 1.5/4.0, it is unacceptable. For GRE, you cannot tell much information from the applicants’ score: almost all students have their math score from 700 to 800, and what is high verbal score meaning to me? So I think recommendation letters and students’ goal are most important for me.

Question 2:  For an undergraduate student who want to join in your research group, what quality do you think they should have? How and what would you teach them?

Answer: Very good questions again. I don’t know how to answer them. It’s hard to tell. When I go through the application material, I will know what quality of each applicant has, and I will know who would be recruited.  Each student’s background is different; I will instruct what they really need based on their interest.

Question 3: What is your academic expectation for your students?

Answer: I hope they know signal detection well. (He’s area is signal detection). But I don’t expect them to continue to work on this field after graduation, you know, students may be more interested in another area after graduation. One of  my students has become a lawyer, and one become a university president in South Africa, and one become a researcher at AT&T, one become a faculty at University of Texas, etc. They choose their career path by their own after graduation.

Question 4: What is your impression on the Chinese students? What is the difference between Chinese students and American students?

Answer: They are very good.  Chinese students know how to solve a certain problem well, but they may not know how to discover and propose a problem well. As an advisor, I will assist my students to enhance this ability.

Question 5: You research area is signal detection, what will you plan to develop in this area?

Answer: Well, I don’t know how to answer. Sometimes, ideas are just come suddenly, and I decided to do what is the most interesting for me.

Question 6: As a professor, you are very busy, how do you organize your life?

Answer: Faculty has a lot of freedom. So it is important for them to organize their time well. It is not easy to do everything based on the time schedule strictly.

Question 7: Some students want to become a faculty in the US when they graduate, what is your suggestion to them? And how to become a professor in ECE Department at Duke University?

Answer:  You should have a lot of publication. You should be an expert in your field to get the funding.

When you are graduated as a PhD, you typically start as an assistant professor in ECE Department at Duke; 4 years later, there will be a review on your performance as an assistant professor, if you pass the review, you have another 4 years as an assistant professor. At your 7^th year typically, there will a review also, if you past, then you would become an associate professor at Duke ECE for 10-year tenure. At your 9^th year as an associate professor, there will be another review, by Graduate School and the Department, if you could successfully convince the committee; you would become a professor, otherwise you should go away.

 

 

由于教授希望匿名进行采访，所以不便于提供教授信息。

编者：郑浩波，杜克经济系Master

 

 

Q1/2:

The applicants would like to know how you evaluate them and how you make admission decisions, if you are the only person have that power. Also, they would like to know, from your point of view, how your colleagues would make the decisions differently if they were the decision makers.

There might be some difference between Chinese and US applicants in some aspects because of cultural difference. How does this difference affect you and your colleagues’ decision making? If an applicant is interested in the field of your research, what knowledge and skills are needed?

How do you train the students working in your research group? If a student help your research throughout his/her doctoral program, which skills to what level would you expect him/her to achieve when graduate?

First of all, we have two types of graduate programs–our masters-degree programs and our Ph.D. programs–and they have different types of applicants and different standards.  In both programs our goal is to admit the very best students, whether they are from the U.S. or another country such as China.  Nowadays many of our best applicants are from China (and other Asian countries such as Japan and Korea), so many of the students we admit are from there.

Our process for admitting Ph.D. students is very democratic.  No one faculty member has more “power” than the others.  However, in any given year there is one faculty member who serves as the coordinator for the program and who is the first person to read the applications, and he tries to sort the applicants into groups according to quality, to make it easier for the other faculty members to evaluate them.  (In a typical year we receive around 100 applications and we want to admit 2 or 3 new students out of this number.)  As I said, we are looking for the best and brightest students, regardless of the country from which they come, and many of  best are from China these days.  One issue here is that most of our faculty members are not as familiar with Chinese universities are we are with American universities, so it is not always clear which candidates studied in the best programs or performed at the very highest level.  Our Chinese faculty members try to help the others to understand the Chinese academic system so that we can all do a better job in evaluating applicants from China.
But as I said, our goal is to admit the very best students, so at the end of the day, we all try to determine which applicants are the smartest and have the best training prior to coming to Fuqua.  Many of the best applicants already have master’s degrees in some field such as applied mathematics or engineering or economics or one of the other sciences.  We are looking for students who will perform at the highest level in our Ph.D. courses and who will also be able to do research at the highest level and ultimately write research papers that will be published in the best academic journals in our field (particularly journals such as Operations Research and Management Science).  In some cases a faculty member who is working on a particular kind of research problem will look for applicants who appear to be interested in working on similar problems.  As students move through our Ph.D. program, they will get involved in research projects with faculty members in conjunction with writing a Ph.D. thesis, so we are looking for students who have the highest potential as researchers and whose interests also appear to be close to those of faculty members in Decision Sciences (as opposed to other fields).   In the Decision Sciences area it is most important for students to be very highly skilled in mathematics and to be interested in research problems that involve the modeling of complex decisions (e.g., problems that involve optimization techniques).   We also look for evidence that the student is excited about doing research and wishes to pursue an academic career after getting the Ph.D. degree.   For a student to have a good chance of getting a good academic job in the U.S., it is important to develop some teaching skills along the way and to become a good speaker of English, in order to be able to teach effectively in English.  When we admit students, we usually do not conduct personal interviews, so we really don’t know much about their English language skills, but we hope that they will become good English speakers while they are here.  We usually arrange for Ph.D. students to serve as teaching assistants and, if possible, to teach some of the business courses that we offer to undergraduate students at Duke (not MBA students).  So, we try hard to prepare students for teaching as well as research.  But overall, I would say that the most important thing we look for is evidence  that the applicant is very smart, and has received a very solid education up to that point (particularly in advanced mathematics), and is highly motivated to have a research career in the Decision Sciences field.

For students in the master’s-degree programs who are from China,  visa status is very important for getting jobs in the U.S., and English language skills and knowledge of American culture are probably relatively more important for jobs in industry than they are for academic jobs.

Q3:

Your researches focus on broad decision sciences. Can you give some insights about how the field will develop in future for prospective applicants? How do you expect your research group would contribute in the field in a few years?

As for trends in research of Decision Sciences, there is a lot of debate across fields about what theories are true or useful, but much of the work in Decision Sciences is driven by advances in computing methods as well as mathematics, and there are important large-scale problems to solve in global business operations using the latest computing technology, so there is plenty of work to be done on the frontier (at least we like to think so).  The problem is with the relatively limited number of faculty positions that are available at the best universities, if you are aiming for a career in academic research.

Q4:

Many applicants want to learn from you when they work in your research group and hope they will lead a faculty life. What is your life look like? How do you organize tasks and push the group forward? How do you balance your work and life? What is the meaning of life?

As far as faculty life goes, our main interest is in research, although we have to spend some of our time in performing teaching and administrative tasks.  We try to arrange our teaching schedules so that we can concentrate our teaching in a few months of the year and leave the rest of the year free for research.  We try to get involved in collaborative research projects with othe faculty members (at Fuqua and other schools) as well as with Ph.D. students, and our goal is to publish papers in the best journals and to do research that will be important and influential in our field.  As far as “the meaning of life” is concerned, we all want to live “a life of the mind” in which we spend most of our day thinking about interesting research problems that can be solved through mathematics. I should add that the academic job market is a “tough” market these days.  Many states have serious budget problems that are affecting the funding of universities, so universities are not hiring as many new faculty members as they did a few years ago, and therefore it is somewhat harder for our Ph.D. students to find good academic jobs.  The same is true to some extent for jobs in industry.

Q5:

According to your experience teaching and working with Chinese students, what do you think are the strength and weakness of Chinese students particularly? Do you have any special suggestions for Chinese undergraduates on preparing for graduate school?

To put everything in a few words, I would say that the most important things for students who come from China are (a) go to one of the best Chinese universities (one that is well known here), (b) take advanced courses and get good grades in them (particularly in mathematics and science, which provide good indicators of intellectual ability), (c) get very good scores on the standardized aptitude tests (the GMAT test for MBA and MMS programs, and GRE for the Ph.D. program), and (d) learn English well enough to get at least an “OK” score on the TOEFL test, and then learn to become a “pretty good” speaker of English after you get here, if not before. The administrators of the programs will probably tell you the same things, because these are the first things that they look at when trying to evaluate applicants.  In our MBA and MMS programs, the admissions process puts a lot of weight on test scores, because they are quantitative AND because master’s-degree programs at different schools are ranked against each other on the basis of the average GMAT scores of their students as well as success at job placement in U.S. companies.  We pay a lot of attention to the rankings of business schools that are published by Business Week and other news services!   I would also recommend that Chinese students try to socialize as much as possible with students from the U.S. and other countries rather than only hanging out with other Chinese students while they are here, in order to get the most benefit out of the program.

 

教授简介：Xiao-Fan Wang received his graduate training in transcriptional regulation of immunoglobulin genes during B cell development with Dr. Kathryn Calame at University of California at Los Angeles.  He received his Doctorate in 1986 in Biological Chemistry and Molecular Biology.  He then spent five years at Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a postdoctoral fellow under the guidance of Dr. Robert Weinberg. The main achievement during this period was the molecular cloning of transforming growth factor ß (TGF-ß) type II and type III receptors.  In 1992 he moved to Duke University Medical Center as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology & Cancer Biology. He is currently a Professor of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology, Donald and Elizabeth Cooke Professor of Experimental Oncology, and the Director of University Program in Molecular Cancer Biology. His other academic activities include serving on the editorial boards of a number of scientific journals, such as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

编者：黄璐，杜克大学分子生物学PhD

 

DCSSA: For those applicants who want to apply for Duke, they want to know how professors evaluate different students. If you could directly recruit students, how would you choose the candidates?

 

Professor: Graduate school is a place where people get trained to develop independent and critical thinking, so we look for candidates who really have the potential to develop such abilities to the level that they can become leaders in the future. Originality and creativity are the most important things we look for. We want to see whether this candidate has curiosity about why things happen and how they happen. Without curiosity, they would not have originality and creativity necessary to become leaders in scientific fields. This could be evaluated by the interview, which could tell us whether the student has really understood the rationale and significance of research project or has asked the question by himself or herself, not just following what they are assigned or told to do. The student should describe what they are doing specifically in the lab, but more importantly, they should be able to explain well why they do this experiment in the context of a big picture.

The second thing is the devotion or passion. Scientists are pursuing a career not aiming for high pay. The candidate needs to realize that this path is really hard but still has passion for pursuing it. He/she should be willing to face the challenge rather than running away when encountering difficulties. My friend Liqun Luo, a professor at Stanford University, told me that he would tell the students who want to join his lab that there are three things that make a person a successful biologist: one thing you cannot control is luck; another thing is being smart, and everybody at Stanford has the necessary intellectual capability; and the only thing left is hard-working. Rarely would you have a very unique idea that has not been pursued by somebody else in the world. Most of the time, many people could have the same ideas, and you should be willing to devote enough time/effort to your bench work as an experimentalist, to get things done to prove or disprove your hypothesis. All of my friends who have been successful in their scientific career have worked very hard.

Generally speaking, curiosity, smartness and hard-working are the raw materials for a successful scientist, so we want to evaluate whether a candidate has these properties. Intellectual levels can be reflected by GPA and GRE scores, and the recommendation letters could tell about the student’s true performance, particularly in a laboratory. We want to see if a student has done in-depth work and has spent enough time in a lab so that he or she could really know by experience the difficulty of experimental science instead of romantic thinking about science. We don’t want to see a student spending only two months in each place for research experience but never really getting anything done. We try to select candidates who have raw materials, devotion and real experience. Then we make a decision.

 

DCSSA: Due to some differences between Chinese students and American students, is there anything particular to consider when choosing Chinese students?

Professor: I think education systems make a difference. We know in general that Chinese students can work harder because of the work ethics in the competitive country, but the downside is that many of them tend not to be as creative, because they have been molded through examinations from kindergarten all the way through college. The worry is that if we only look at the grades, we may get somebody who could be wonderful on papers but lack creativity, so we try to probe that a little bit more when we evaluate Chinese students.

Language issues also play a role. A lot of candidates have actually done better in the interview than their writing, so we try to look over the scores on the writing part of GRE, which can be evaluated by the communication through E-mails back and forth. We want to see whether the student’s English is good enough to communicate. College students should really pay attention to their communication skills so that they could talk with more natural flow and also write in length without making so many mistakes. Before sending out anything, they should check for any simple mistakes. If we see too many simple mistakes in the writing, we would judge this person is either poor at English writing or not careful enough.

DCSSA: If an undergraduate wants to do research in your field, what do you think are the most important abilities that they should develop, and do you have any suggestions for them?

Professor: In college, students need to choose a good lab to do research, and especially in-depth research. They should know exactly what they are doing and try to develop critical thinking. The recommendation letters from professors could tell how a student performs in the lab, and we rely heavily on that to judge whether a student has potential to become a successful researcher.

DCSSA. If a student enters your lab, how would you train your students? What is your expectation for the students graduating from your lab? What do you think they would achieve when they graduate?

Professor: So far twenty students graduated from my lab with Ph.D. Everyone is unique. As a mentor, you should gradually know each person and try to make sure that the students get most out of their strength and also minimize their weakness. Then you try to give them the chance to develop further what they want to do, because not everyone would make the same kind of career choice in the future. Not everyone could become a professor or a leader in industry, and they might do different things, such as teaching, regulatory jobs, or even becoming a patent lawyer. As a mentor, you try to shape each person based on what they want and facilitate their effort in creating a unique career path. If you think this person has the potential and the desire to go to academia, to become a professor and run a lab in the future, you want to give him or her some challenge necessary to mature. Most importantly, we try to train the student to develop in-depth independent thinking. In our lab, when we design a project, we discuss and decide the general directions, but it is up to the students who come up with the detailed experimental design. Besides project design, they also learn other things. Whenever there is a chance, we work together to write fellowships and grants so that they could learn the thinking process and experience how to put things together as proper written documents. They should always write their research papers themselves. I have never written the first draft of a single paper for any students. The pattern in our lab is the following: the student would write the first draft, and then I would read but not change anything. I would tell them what needs to be changed, and they would revise themselves. After a couple of times, when the paper is already in shape, then I start to work on it. I believe in this way the student would benefit the most from the exercises. Otherwise, if they bypass those steps but only see the final product, they could not learn so much. In general, to shape a student to what they want to be in the future is the most important thing for a mentor. I would give students opportunities to develop the necessary skills to facilitate their future career. For example, communication skills are the most important qualities for students, no matter what they will do in the future. So in lab meetings, I want to see the student not only presenting the data, but also explaining well the background and the rationale to make people easily follow and understand. We also have journal club in which students are trained to critically analyze other people’s work. They also help review papers, which helps develop their critical thinking and writing. That is how I train the students. The training process has to be a combination of different aspects, because it is really hard and the students often miss some parts in the training. Once they finish graduate school, they get the basic training, which allow them to design and to execute experiments, to have some independent thinking and some communication skills, both writing and oral. But post-doctoral stage is the most important for them to launch their career, to choose what they want to do in the next ten years, to choose their field and the question they want to study, and to truly develop independent thinking. If you arm yourself with a lot of skills during graduate school, it will be easier for you to transition to postdoctoral stage.

DCSSA: Your research area includes the molecular mechanisms of TGF-ß signaling, cell cycle checkpoint control and tumor microenvironment. Would you please tell us something about the prospect of these areas? What are the future plans for your lab?

Professor: The next major frontier of cancer research would be tumor microenvironment: how do tumor cells handle their relationship with the surroundings? How does a cell escape into a new tissue, and survive in that new environment? In the original environment, the primary tumor site, tumor cells have subverted the surrounding tissue/cells to serve the growth of the tumor, since it could be ten to thirty years before a single cell eventually grow out as a primary tumor. It takes so long to cultivate the surroundings to cooperate with other cells to serve the purpose of tumor formation. After the tumor cells leave the primary site and get to a new place, they are alone, then how could they survive in the new hostile environment? This is the major challenge for metastasis to occur. Millions of cells escape from the primary site, but very few could survive and grow in the new environment. That is metastasis, which kills 90 percent of cancer patients. We want to understand this process, which involves multiple stromal cell types, and we want to know how they work together with tumor cells to generate the unique feature of that particular cancer. The pathological nature of the tumor microenvironment would determine the outcome of the disease, the prognosis of cancer patients. Those are the major issues we need to address, so we are moving all the way to that direction. We would study all the different cell types involved, how they influence cancer cell behavior, how tumor cells escape and survive in a new place and get to different places of the body. Those are the major questions, and we study the mechanisms mainly by working on the secreted molecules, including TGF-ß, which could influence cells in the surrounding environment and in turn regulate other secreted molecules. In this context, we also study the mediators for the biological processes, particularly microRNAs. In general, because we want to base our studies on clinical relevance, we always start from clinical data, identify pattern changes, study why they change, what they do and the mechanisms, and eventually go back to the clinic to validate our findings. That is the approach and strategy we take. Those are the things we would focus in the next few years.

DCSSA: Many graduate students want to become faculty and be like you in the future. Could you please tell us what your current life is like? How could you run a lab so well?

Professor: Once you become a PI, you have to learn a lot of things. You should learn how to plan. You need to have some long-term research plans to address bigger questions in your field, but you should not bet everything on that. You also need to have safe projects that you can accomplish relatively easier within five years. You have to choose your own unique direction to create a niche of research in a competitive field. You also need to learn to choose your lab members and to give suitable tasks to different people based on their own feature and ability. Once you have done that, you learn how to manage money after getting your funding. At the time you start your independent lab, you need to spend enough time at the bench teaching people; because that is the time you are the best. After a few years, when you have some well-trained senior students and postdocs in the lab who could teach others, the transition comes, and you start to deal with other issues. You have to spend more time in writing, such as writing grants, helping write papers, and communicating with other people who are important for your research, such as collaborators in different places. You also start to travel more to give talks to have exposure in the field at seminars and meetings. All those things allow you to become more mature. Then you have to go through the tenure process to prove that you have made significant contribution to a particular field. Once you become a full professor, you spend a lot of time dealing with other different issues, such as our interview right now. You have to write a lot of letters for different kinds of people, because your words become more important once you become a senior faculty. You would also review grants by participating in review panels. You have to find a balance between these things. Some people are interested in administrative work. I am more interested in policy issues, such as helping the Chinese government with policy changes in the areas of science and education. I am also dealing with editorial issues, which give me a lot of exposure and chance to promote other people’s career. I am willing to do these things. It takes time, but it is you yourself who choose what to do and find a balance between these different issues.

DCSSA: Have you taken any Chinese students? What is your impression of Chinese students? What do you think are the weak points of Chinese students? Do you have any suggestions for Chinese students?

 

Professor: Fortunately, so far I have an outstanding group of Chinese students in my lab. In general, they are very smart and independent. They could design their own projects, and everyone works hard. What they could improve are the communication skills, both in writing and speaking. They could always become much better, so they still need to push themselves a little bit more. Some people started pretty well, but it is a pity that they did not improve much after a few years. My suggestion is that they should force themselves to talk more in English, with both Chinese and American students.

I started to learn English when I was 23 years old when I entered Wuhan University. During our times in graduate school, when we had a break during experiments, we talked a lot with each other in the lab. In addition to science, we also discussed other things. I am interested in many topics, including politics, law, and economics. By talking with people on so many topics, I had the chance to use many words that I had never used, and my English communication skills were improved. Moreover, while talking about these different topics, one has to analyze a lot of issues, which involve critical thinking and analytical skills. This helps build an analytical mind, which is what a Ph.D. degree aims for.

By talking with different people on different topics, you also learn a lot and your horizon is broadened. If you want to become a professor, you should not only know your narrow field. You should try to be a scholar. As a scholar, you are curious about many things and know many things, not just science. You can learn things not only by talking with people but also by reading. You could have a deeper appreciation for many things by reading newspapers and books. The more you know, the more colorful your life would be, and you could have a lot to talk about with different people when you go to meetings and interviews. If you don’t have enough knowledge on a broad spectrum of topics, you appear to be shallow and without the basis to make sound argument about anything. So this is the suggestion I have for Chinese students: try to broaden your horizon and train yourself to be a scholar.

 

教授简历：杜克大学社会学系、亚太研究中心教授。1983年毕业于北京大学东语系获得学士学位、1986年毕业于北京大学高等教育研究所获得硕士学位，1994年毕业于美国普林斯顿大学获得博士学位。高柏教授博士毕业后一直在杜克大学任教，于2000 年获得终身教职任副教授，于2003 年起任正教授。高柏的研究领域为经济社会学，比较政治经济学，比较历史社会学，和国际政治经济学。 他的主要著作包括1997 年剑桥大学出版社出版的《经济意识形态与日本产业政策：1931-1965 年期间的发展主义》（该书荣获1998 年美国大学出版社联合会每两年颁发一次，涵盖人文社会科学各领域的有则广巳日本研究最佳图书奖，中译本由上海人民出版社于2008 年出版），和2001 年剑桥大学出版社出版的《日本的经济悖论：繁荣与停止的制度根源》（中译本由商务印书馆于 2004 年出版）。高柏曾经获得普林斯顿大学 Marion Levy 比较研究奖，以及Woodrow Wilson Fellow。他的研究分别两次受到美国社会科学委员会与日本国际交流基金的赞助。高柏曾经在日本东京大学社会科学研究所，一桥大学经济学系，横滨国立大学国际商学与法学院，东京经济大学，以及德国科隆马克斯-普朗克社会研究所任访问学者，并于 2006 年夏季在东京大学社会科学研究所担任客座教授，2010 年夏季在日本明治大学政治经济学部担任客座教授。目前，高柏除了在杜克大学任教之外，还担任上海财经大学的特聘教授。高柏近年来把研究的重心由日本转向中国。他为上海人民出版社编辑了一套经济社会学丛书，目前已经出版8 册，主要介绍美国经济社会学里制度学派的文献。高柏目前紧密关注的研究题目都与全球化和中国有关。

编者：盖鹏，杜克亚太研究中心

DCSSA：高老师好，您从93年来到杜克大学社会学系，到目前已经在杜克工作了近20年，作为一名华人教授，您在美国社会学界取得了很大的成就，能谈谈您当时是怎么走上社会学道路的吗？

高柏教授：我选择社会学有一些偶然性。我是1979年进到北大读本科学日本语言文学的，1983年进入到北京大学高等教育研究所读硕士，1986年1月毕业后留校任教，半年后我选择了赴美留学。当时来到美国的第一站是UCLA的教育学院，在那里跟随社会学出身的伯顿.克拉克教授研究比较高等教育。后来转到普林斯顿大学读社会学跟我太太有关。当时她正在申请美国东海岸大学的PhD。她看到普林斯顿大学的东亚系要求学生同时会中文和日文，而我正好有这方面的特长，就建议我申请转学。于是我与普林斯顿东亚系联系，告诉他们我想去研究“日本高等教育对明治时期国家建设的作用”。东亚系告诉我他们研究历史只管到明治维新以前，要研究明治以后应该申请社会学系或者历史系，我就申请了社会学系并被录取。普林斯顿毕业后就来到杜克教书，然后就一直这么走过来了。

DCSSA: 我们知道您在文革中下过乡、在工厂里做过技术员，79年考入北大东语系读日语专业，而后又在北大读教育学的硕士学位，您能谈谈这几段经历对您后来从事社会学研究的意义吗？

高柏教授：可能很多人觉得从外语专业到教育学再到社会学跨度很大，但这对经历过文革的我们这一代人来说并不稀奇。我71年初中毕业，73年下乡在农场劳动了3年多，然后作为最后一届工农兵学员在哈尔滨机械工业学校学习了一年半，工业学校毕业后又到一个工厂里做了1年技术员。下乡时，正赶上第一次世界石油危机，我被选到哈尔滨知识青年函授大学学习国家政治经济学，后来又在那里当老师，给其他的下乡知识青年讲国际政治经济的形势。我对国际政治经济学的兴趣从那时就开始了。这也影响了我后来对大学专业的选择。

79年高考的时候，我的成绩是黑龙江省文科第一名，这一年高考黑龙江省允许考生在知道考分后重报志愿。我的成绩可以在北大随便挑选专业。当时我过去的老师建议我学国际法。但我想到自己喜欢国际政治经济，而这又需要懂外语，于是便选择了北大的日语专业。

现在回想起来，在北大的经历对我的学术生涯有很大的影响。这些影响体现在国际视野，宏观的研究定位，以及跨学科方法等三个方面。

在本科学外语开阔了我的国际视野，日语专业让我对日本历史及社会政治经济情况有了很多了解，这也为我后来做博士论文《经济意识形态与日本产业政策：1931—1965年的发展主义》打下了良好基础。 通过研究日本，我发现日本在战前受德国的影响极大，而其战后经济发展的战略又与美国主导的国际政治经济体系又有着密不可分的联系。由于日本的这些特点，我一直对国际政治经济学和比较政治经济学非常感兴趣。

我对宏观研究感兴趣与硕士期间的经历有关。我的导师汪永铨教授当时是北大的教务长，他与教育部教育研究中心的主任郝克明承担了一个国家6.5社会科学研究重点项目，即高等教育结构与工业化与现代化的关系。当时我们北大高等教育研究所第一批硕士生都是外语出身，除了我研究日本之外，还有研究美国，俄国，法国，和德国的。我在研究日本的高等教育发展史的过程中发现，要想研究高等教育现象，是不可能只从教育内部的观点来看问题的，因为它与政治，经济，以及社会因素之间有太多的联系。从那时起，关注宏观层面的现象就成了我的爱好。

喜欢跨学科的视角也与北大的经历有关。 我在1983年至1986年读硕士期间经常参加北大研究生会未名学社的活动。这是一个跨学科的学生组织，大家以此为平台讨论各种社会科学问题。 当时在北大参加过未名学社活动，现在仍然在国内学术界活跃的人物包括马伯强、李明德，顾昕、阎布克，刘伟，吴国盛，孙永平，钱立等。海外的有美国Temple大学的王培，伦敦政治经济学院的孙来祥等人。张炳九与陈坡好像现在在经商，而张来武，李书磊，罗建平等后来从政。

DCSSA：您是从上大学起就立志要做研究吗，有没有考虑过其他的选择？

我一直喜欢研究。 也有过其他选择，在我通过普林斯顿博士生大考（general exam）的80年代末，正是日本经济如日中天的时候，当时有机会去华尔街工作。后来我在去日本做博士论文调查与去华尔街之间选择了前者。我觉得我不是一个在商界做事的料。现在看来选择学术界是更适合我的。

DCSSA: 很多中国学生对杜克大学社会学系很感兴趣，您能就申请录取方面给大家一些指点吗？

高柏教授：社会学系的录取是由招生委员会决定的，招生委员会的成员并不固定，每年的录取情况也会略有不同。一般来说，外语成绩是个硬指标，被录取学生的GRE成绩最好达到1400分以上,新TOEFL成绩最好在100分以上。当然这并不意味着GRE和TOEFL只要达到以上分数就能被录取。教授们更看重的还是writing samples 和statement of purpose。 Writing  samples是指申请人以前写过或发表过的文章，教授们通过writing samples中体现的理论和分析技巧，驾驭实证材料的能力等各个方面来评估申请人的学术素质以及逻辑思维能力。Statement of purpose主要反映申请人对一个学术领域了解的程度，能够考察申请人在掌握文献的基础上提出有意义的研究问题，与学术前沿接轨的能力。中国学生在英语写作，尤其是在写符合美国社会科学规范的writing samples和statement of purposes有些劣势，但也不是太大的问题。总之，美国大学的录取看的是一个申请人与系里的兴趣是否符合。在这个过程中有一定的主观随意性。录取委员会成员之间的口味会有不同。

DCSSA:对于一个本科生毕业生来说，如果他希望能够进入到您的这个领域攻读PHD，他们最应该培养的能力是什么？

高柏教授： 最应该培养的能力有很多。但是，有的可以在PHD阶段培养，有的要从本科时就培养。在本科阶段我认为比较重要的是能够提出在一个学科中有价值有意义的研究题目以及搜集实证材料的能力。以我的经验来看，美国的本科生在搜集实证材料的能力上普遍要比中国的本科生强，这可能与他们接触信息技术的早晚与多少有关系。

另外，中美之间在学术文化上有很大的区别。中国人的学术习惯可能与欧洲大陆更接近，如果通过思辨能理解的事物就不再进行实证。一般而言，中国大学生理解抽象概念的能力要比美国大学生强许多。因此，中国的大学里讲课经常重视概论式的东西，盛行演绎法，从概念到概念，往往缺少实证材料。而这种路数在美国却行不通。 美国的学术文化是没有经过实证证明的东西不算数。给美国学生讲一个概念必须要举很多例子说明。美国的许多学术研究在中国人看来是浪费大量的时间与精力去证明一些不证自明的常识性概念。美国的学术，至少是社会学的特点更接近归纳法，从一个个小的局部出发，由不同的人反复证明，以求能最后堆出一个体系来。

由于这些学术文化上的区别，对一个来自中国大学的申请人来说，能够在提出观点的同时也知道如何搜集实证材料来证明自己的观点就变得十分重要。

DCSSA:您所指的实证偏数量统计还是偏史料搜集呢？

高柏教授：实证的意义是多方面的，不只是定量，也包括定性上的。如果研究历史上的现象，就必然要涉及史料，如果研究现实类问题，也包括文献、数据、深度访谈，个案研究材料。定性和定量在实证的意义上是很难截然分开的。

DCSSA:您所研究的经济社会学、国际政治经济学、全球化等领域的宏观性都很强，您是通过什么线索将这几个不同的方向串起来的？您能展望下这些领域的研究前景吗？

高柏教授：对我来说，不管是经济社会学、国际政治经济学、比较政治经济学，还是全球化、比较历史社会学的研究，都贯穿了一条“制度”的主线。制度主义是我分析问题的主要视角。我在普林斯顿读博士期间，受到道宾和狄马吉奥等人的很大影响。

提到研究前景，我想提一下2008年全球金融危机，我所从事的研究领域出现的对未来世界与中国政治经济有重大影响的课题都与这次危机有关。在国际政治经济学的领域，未来国际金融体系的走向，尤其是未来美元的国际地位，是目前研究的重点。这次危机的起源与美元本位制有直接的关系，危机后美国国债已经发展到一个国际金融市场有可能不愿意再承受的水平，再加上最近中东发生的一系列政治变动，这一切都会进一步削弱美元的地位。那么如果美元地位真的出现急剧变化，必然会影响美国的霸权。这在未来的国际秩序上将有一系列的连锁反应。

经济社会学最近的一个新热点是金融社会学。美国的社会学家们有着美国经济学们没有的优势。战后美国学院派的经济学以规范式分析为主，实证式分析较少。而我们社会学家擅长进行实证分析，在进行历史分析时有很多手段可用。 经济社会学在分析单位上可以上至国际金融秩序，下至企业的金融，十分灵活。同时经济社会学又发展出制度学派和网络学派等不同的视角。目前已经有一批经济社会学家们正在从各种侧面分析2008年全球金融危机的起因。

另外，中国近年来的崛起也使得中国成为各个学术领域的关注焦点。关于中国发展模式的讨论和辩论恐怕还要持续一段很长的时间。

DCSSA:很多研究生们都会有毕业后做faculty的想法，they may want to be “like you” in the future，能谈谈您的faculty生活是什么样的吗？

高柏教授：选择做faculty就选择了一种生活方式，faculty生活的好处时间机动，比较自由，做的是自己喜欢做的事情。另一方面，做faculty永远能跟最新的知识打交道，接触最前沿的东西，创造最新的体验，这是个很享受的过程。一般来说，做faculty最忙的是拿到tenure之前的几年，就我当时的情况，经常七天24小时不分昼夜地做paper或者忙出版专著，top学校的压力往往会更大。在拿到了tenure之后工作强度会相对减轻，不过家庭方面的压力会在这时候凸显出来，照顾父母和小孩子开始占用很多时间精力，所以其实压力是一直存在的。如果考虑做faculty，首先要看自己是不是很喜欢教授的生活的方式，如果喜欢比较灵活、没有约束的生活，那么做faculty是非常合适的。我每年会有三到四次的国外旅行，这些既是做研究的需要，也丰富了生活，这些都让我很享受。

DCSSA:我们也很想了解一下您对中国学生的看法，不知道您以前是否待过中国学生，你认为中国学生有哪些弱点需要克服的吗？你对中国学生的发展有没有什么建议呢？

高柏教授：我带过中国学生，觉得中国到这边来的学生都很不错，没有作为一个群体普遍存在的缺点。可能个别学生会存在一些问题，但这些情况在美国学生身上也会存在，反倒是中国学生的优点很明显，他们都比较用功。在将来的发展上，不管是继续留在学校还是从事实际工作，我完全尊重学生个人的选择，希望他们都能过让自己满意开心的幸福的生活。

 

教授简历：刘杰教授，男，1968年生，山东夏津人。1983年考入山东大学化学系，1990年硕士毕业。1991进入哈佛大学化学系攻读博士，导师Charles M. Lieber教授。1996年在莱斯大学进行博士后研究，导师Richard E. Smalley教授。1999年受聘于杜克大学化学系，2004年成为终身教授。截止2011年，在Science, Nature, Advanced Materials, JACS, Nano letter等刊物上发表文章140多篇。

编者：武攀，杜克化学系博士生

采访时间：2011年3月4日

编者：请问如果您是招生委员会的一员，或者您能够直接录取学生，在这么多申请材料中，你会用什么样的准则筛选材料，进行选择呢？

刘杰：研究生院（Graduate School）有一些guideline，比如说托福、GRE、GPA等。这并不是一个刚性的线，是一个指导分数线。但是如果你的申请材料有一项低于这个线的话，假如有400个申请者，其中300个都满足guideline，那么你的录取几率就大大降低了。然后就是要看学生成绩、哪里毕业的。我们考虑最重要的还是学生的科研能力，比如说有没有发表文章等等。在这方面国内硕士毕业的人就有一些优势，因为拥有一些高档次文章，可以证明自己的科研能力。科研能力和GPA、考试的能力不一样，有些人考试很好，所有课程全是A，但是科研动手能力比较差。最后是要看领域，因为要平衡整个系里哪个方向缺学生。比如说，杜克的理论化学很强，可是近些年比较缺学生，所以这些对理论化学感兴趣学生的材料就会被优先考虑。

我们了解申请者科研经历一般通过以下两个途径：一个是发表文章的质量，一个就是推荐信。这里中国学生就有一些不占优势，因为从中国来的推荐信，基本上都是一样的，看不出来谁好谁坏（笑），有些时候，即使在committee都很认真审查的情况下，也很难做出非常正确的决定。Being a committee, we read every single application, try to assign a grade, and then compare。（一个committee里面，大概有四五个教授，对于不同的申请者分别打分，然后每个人给一个平均值，决定录取优先级）

编者：请问你喜欢将要您组里的学生有什么样的素养/知识准备呢？

刘杰：对于希望进入我组的学生，。第一，下定决心要做科学家，不要三心二意；第二，他/她的动手能力和独立思考能力应该很强。如果我能够直接招学生的话，我会和学生的指导老师联系，确定他/她的动手能力、科研能力以及决定力（今后要在科学界的决心），都足够强，才会录取。当然，其实化学系也在讨论增加面试这一过程。

 

编者：如果学生来到你组里读博士，您会对他/她进行什么样的训练或者培养？以及毕业之后，你希望他们能够做什么工作呢？

刘杰：一般的学生，刚进实验室的时候，不会有自己的想法；要先给他讲一讲将来做什么，这就需要先把现有的实验技术学习好，在学习的同时我会给学生一个项目去做，练一下手。我有一个培养学生的哲学：如果学生能够来到我的办公室，和我说自己有一个很好的想法，并且能够给出证据让我信服，而且还能把这个想法转化为发表的文章。这个时候，他/她就可以毕业了。（笑）有自己的想法，还能够自己完成出来，这就说明他已经可以毕业：走出这个实验室，可以有自己的领域。

编者：这样的话，从您这里毕业的学生、博士后，他们现在都在哪里工作呢？

刘杰：从我这里毕业的人，博士生、博士后一共大概有15名左右，学术界和工程界大概各占一半。

编者：刘老师果然是桃李满天下。其实我一直有一个学术上的问题，相信很多学生都想到过。您的研究领域是纳米科技，尤其是碳纳米管。然而自从碳纳米管从1950年左右被首次发现，进入之后的合成上很多技术的发展，各种电磁学性质的研究，以及进入了和生物等领域的交叉，请问现在这个领域的发展现状是什么样呢？

刘杰：这个问题很有意思，也很好。以前我在国际会议上，听到过一种说法，是任何一个科研领域的发展都比较符合这样的曲线：



 

 

 

 

一开始，一个感兴趣的领域被人发现（a点），很多人一拥而上，整个领域如火如荼（b点，比如superconductor，nano-technology, molecular electronic, graphene）；然后，所有比较简单的概念、方法、实验都被理解或者完成了，并且出现一些很难克服的问题，于是这个领域科研活力就会下降（c点：比如说碳纳米管在3年以前，是低谷期，很多人都转去做石墨烯了）；在向后，大部分困难的问题被解决了（d点），技术趋向于成熟，于是又会有很多人转入这个领域（e点），最终领域发展到其稳定的状态（应用领域）。有些领域，困难的问题克服不了，就成了大家不太感兴趣的方向了。比如说High Tc  superconductor一样，现在科研活力很低。现在的碳纳米管研究基本上到了d点。
编者：碳纳米管领域的瓶颈是什么呢？

刘杰：还是可控性质的合成。合成碳纳米管很简单，但是合成需要性质/形状的碳纳米管是很难的。我们实验室现在就是在尽量解决这些问题。

 

编者：那您实验室在今后五年或者十年准备如何发展呢？

刘杰：生长机理，可控生长：这些最基本的理论，虽然是难啃的骨头，但是非常重要，所以要继续啃；同时我们在研究碳纳米管新的应用领域：比如说进入能量存储领域，水纯化领域，透明导电薄膜等。

 

编者：老师对碳纳米管领域确实有独特和深入的见解。关于科研领域之外，我还有一些问题：老师您有这么大的一个实验室要运行，还要经常参加各种会议，有很多高档次文章发表；上次去你家的时候发现家中井井有条，生活上非常滋润（笑）。然而我听说MIT（麻省理工大学）的教授很多凌晨两三点才回家睡觉，早晨七八点就来到实验室，工作特别努力，不知道你是如何这么好的安排自己的作息时间，能够得到这么高的成就呢？

刘杰：呵呵，有几种不同的科学家。比如说，我博士生导师，Charles Lieber，他就工作非常刻苦，（当时在读博士生期间）早晨四五点收到他邮件是很正常的事情，他在纳米上面的成就是非常高的了；而我的博士后导师，Richard Smalley，就完全不一样，可以算是一个老顽童。他对科学的态度，和小孩对自己玩具的态度是一样的，他在有创造性的玩科研。每当看到一篇新文章、一个新实验方法，他两眼发光就冲上去了。他是非常有创造力而且非常投入的，这样做科研就很享受。当然，如果你又喜欢，又工作特别刻苦，那就准备拿诺贝尔奖吧（笑）。我个人争取向两位导师们都学习，更加倾向于Smalley那种享受科研的方式。比如说，做科研和小孩子打游戏一样，通宵一点都不觉得累（笑）。

 

编者：您实验室中国学生和非中国学生的比例大概是50:50，您认为中国学生有什么特点或者优缺点吗？

刘杰：中国学生非常愿意花时间工作，但是很少显示自己的兴趣。（Put into the time, but not show much interest about the research）。刻苦的工作是很重要的，可是我也希望他们能够更加享受科研的乐趣，并且拥有创造性和自己的想法。做实验科学是十分有兴趣的，我们做实验之前，很有可能不知道结果是什么，得到一个意料之外的结果，并且能够分析出它的背景和物理原因，这样的结果是最好的结果。我希望中国学生可以多读一些文献，然后自己产生科研的火花，这样才能今后有自己的领域。

编者：您曾经在哈佛大学，莱斯大学学习，后来又来到了杜克；而且从您任教职的这一段时间内，学术访问了很多学校。请问和其他学校相比，您认为杜克（化学系）科研的特点是什么呢？

刘杰：杜克（科学）的特点，是医学中心非常好。化学系尽量从医学中心那里得到一些新的数据和非常好的想法，然后利用化学的方法去解决/解释这些问题。优点是杜克化学整个系非常的开放，对于做交叉学科等是非常的欣赏和鼓励，这不像一些古板的学校：做有机化学就只是有机，分析化学就是分析。杜克化学系的活力很大，冲劲很大，对于创新型的科学很鼓励。

 

王小凡老师是杜克大学生物系著名学者，也是我们DCSSA的advisor。最近中国科学时报对王小凡老师进行了一系列的采访，其中包括关于中国学术道德等方面。这些信息应对于我们身在杜克的学生学者们有着重要的帮助和指导意义。
详情请参见：http://dukechina.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Science_Times.pdf