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小木虫论坛-学术科研互动平台 » 科研生活区 » English Cafe » Diary » A face-to-face talk with the former president of BUPT
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志乐激昂

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[交流] A face-to-face talk with the former president of BUPT

A face-to-face talk with the former president of BUPT

Beijing University of Post and Telecommunications (BUPT) is a very famous university in china, especially when the field of optical fiber communication technology is concerned. The former president of BUPT, Prof. Jintong Lin is a famous Chinese scientist in this field, who had done many excellent and original works which led to the invention of Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier (EDFA). This all optical amplifier EDFA is widely regarded as one of the milestones in the development of optical fiber communication system, which greatly impacts our society and the information age. (As we all know the significant impacts of optical communication technology had on our society, because its inventor Dr. Charles Kao was awarded the Nobel Prize in physic in 2009.)

I was very excited to meet Prof. Lin because I had heard so much about him. I was sure that I could learn something important from this distinguished specialist. He is in his 70s but he still looked very sharp and spirited in suits. We had a very informal talk in the meeting room of our college building. No leaders, no department heads attended this talk, there were just some PhD students and some stuff members working in the field related to optical communications and optoelectronics.

Prof. Lin talked about his life and study when he was in Britain. And as a former president of a university for 10 years, he also shared with us some of his insights and thoughts about working in a university. He told us that, in a university, if you were a head of a college or a department, you should find more opportunities of doing important research works for your fellow stuff members, such as getting research funds and projects. You should get out of you campus more often instead of just staying in your office, taking every chance to let people outside know what you and your stuff were capable of, so that you could get more cooperation opportunities with others on some big research projects. You also need to get the attention from the related government agencies in charge of research programs in order to get more research funds.
If you were a university professor, you should lead your team to carry out deeper research in your field and try your best to propose meaningful and valuable research topics and problems for your PhD students to investigate, and help them do a great job in their research work so that they can publish high quality papers. He stressed that professors should let their students be the first authors of their publications if the research work was really finished by their students. Professors should not take the credits from their students when publishing papers is concerned. (I guess you may know that in some universities, some professors would like to be the first author of the paper which is actually written by his students.)
If you were a PhD student, then you should focus all your time and energy on your research topics at hand. Try your every effort to do what a PhD student was supposed to do, namely, discovering new knowledge which no one had ever done before you. Your discovery should lead to new ideas and understandings of the world. And what you had discovered should push the front of knowledge for the entire human race. He emphasized especially that PhD students should not waste their time on playing Wei-chat, computer games or something like that. Their time is limited and should be totally devoted into their study and research topics.
  
When I had the chance to talk to him privately I mentioned to him some of my thoughts on the current situation in some of the universities and colleges (including mine) which I had written an article about and published it here with a title “The sick plum blossom”. He admitted that there were some problems with our education system in China. And the problems I proposed did exist, and could cause some bad consequences for our students and young college teachers.
He said that currently the priority for our government was to relieve people from poverty. We might not have enough solutions to solve this problem in our universities and colleges, and let lone to change the whole education system. We had to admit that the quality of education in western countries was really better than that in China today. That’s why we all believed that getting an academic degree from western countries was very important for working in the science and technology fields, including universities and colleges. He took himself as an example as he said he had received very good education in Britain. It was not just the knowledge he acquired, the education also changed his mindset. So when he came back to China to lead BUPT, he made some new policies, which had great positive impact on the development of this university. He also mentioned that the president of Tsinghua University, Dr Chen as another example. This guy was chosen instead of other Chinese academicians (a member of Chinese Academy of Science or Chinese Academy of Engineering is called academician) to lead Tsinghua University, was mainly because he got a lot of education and working experience in Britain, which is believed by many might have the potential to make a difference for the future development of this famous university.

  You might not be satisfied with your current environment. You could always leave and find a better place for yourself. If you could not leave, then you had to adapt yourself to your current environment. There were no other choices. You, as an individual, were not powerful enough to go against with the whole system. If you did so, there might be two possibilities: one was that you may lead a revolution which would reshape the landscape of the education system in your university or even the whole nation. And you would become a very brilliant figure in our country because of this. On the other hand, however, you might fail to achieve what you want, and could get into trouble and became very broke and busted. And he said the latter was more possibly to happen based on my situation.

You might admire those famous scientists, and always wanted to be one of them. But you should not compare yourself with them, if it made you worry and disappointed. Even though we had a saying in China, which went “A soldier who doesn’t want to become a general is not a good soldier”. But we had to admit that people‘s starting points were different, and this could be a decisive factor for one’s future. He made a metaphor to illustrate his point by using the example of many electrons moving in a magnetic field. Even the magnetic field was the same everywhere, and every electron was trying hard to move forward, but different electrons would follow different path if their initial speeds and/or initial position in the field was different. Therefore, they would finally get to different destiny. (If you know something about magnetic field, you will understand that electrons moving in a magnetic field will be affected by the so called Lorentz force. Even different electrons move at the same speed, if their initial positions and/or moving directions are different, they will very likely follow different paths and get to different destinations at the end. For example, if the moving direction of an electron is perpendicular to the magnetic field, it will follow a route of a round circle due to the Lorentz force. However if the electron’s initial moving direction is parallel to the magnetic field, this electron will follow a route of a straight line without the affect of Lorentz force). So you should not compare yourself with those famous scientists, because your initiate condition was different from theirs, even you had the talent and you worked every hard, it was still hard to say how far you could get in future.

You had finished all your education in China, but you had not received the high quality training from the first-class institutes in the world. Still you would become a professor yourself someday, and you would also lead a team with many students. There were many professors in our country who were just like you. If you were disappointed with those professors and the leaders, still you needed to follow their orders if you worked under them; at least you should not go against them. You just needed to work well on your current post and wait for your opportunities. One day if you got a promotion to a higher position, you might make some changes to your college within your power limit.

The above-mentioned are the conversations between me and Prof. Lin. Most of the contents and words were from Prof. Lin with some minor revisions because I can not remember clearly every detail. (Of course we talked in Chinese, but here I would like to write it out in English.) After this talk, I feel quite peaceful in mind. After all, I chose this college by myself, and I chose to stay on my own will. So I should not complain too much. Becoming a scientist was my childhood dream, but no one ever forced me to realize it. Besides, in my primary school years, as I can remember, many of my classmates wanted to become scientists. I guess it was the social ideology and value of that time made us think this way. Compared with my classmates, at least I can say now that I am the closest to this childhood dream. Almost none of my classmates would really like science and research when they grow up, and they don’t even show any interests in getting a PhD, let alone receiving the first-class training from a world famous scientist. I realized that our social value is changing when I heard a piece of news days ago. It said that after a public poll of some primary school kids about their dreams, most students said they wanted to become entrepreneurs or singers. Becoming a scientist only ranked the 7th or 8th in the list. I don’t know if my future kid wants to become a scientist or not. But if he/she does, I will definitely send him/her abroad to study, based on what I have heard from Prof. Lin.
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1楼 2014-04-12 21:06:20
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Lopemann

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引用回帖:
6楼: Originally posted by 志乐激昂 at 2014-04-15 12:44:17
good point but you need to improve your English

Are you talking about mac?
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现实世界的理想主义卧底 Gypsy in memory
7楼2014-04-15 18:44:27
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mac194

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Thanks for relaying Prof Lin's message!
COMMENT:
  Don't be too concerned about your educational background
  Ed Witten - famous for eliminating duplicate string theories - started at Brandeis
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2楼2014-04-13 02:33:01
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zw0123456789zw

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Felix Baumgartner Space Jump
Thanks for master's patient descriptions and suggestions under your practical interview with Prof. Lin
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3楼2014-04-13 08:37:56
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tuqin2575

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Lopemann: 回帖置顶 2014-04-13 22:04:21
Lopemann: 金币+12, ESEPI+1 2014-04-13 22:11:09
I highly appreciate Prof. Lin and his mindsets in your expression though I am not in this field. In history there were many talents who might not be well valued by his time and society and instead could shine centuries later. It is normal that many of us wanna become someone important in our fields and valuable to the society. But the Rome in our dreams will not be built so easily. In this regard I wanna share one opinion here: a wise man is not the one who goes smoothly all his life but the one who can tolerate the downs of life and his present mediocrity. A wise man should have a kind of natural ease and confidence. If I were Prof. Lin, you talk to me about some of your suggestions, I will analyze them in my knowledge. If much of the talk is about your considerations and complaints, I will reckon that either you get great talents which your colleagues and leaders cannot follow, or you may spend less time and energy on your work for unfair payments or position. These will not benefit your progress. I cannot agree more with Prof. Lin that we should go outside and communicate with more people at higher positions or with better capabilities to know what they consider, what they do to their teams for their responsibilities and how they deal with some complicated relations. As an independent scientist, you need not to be ruined by the Chinese administrators or deceived by the western dream. Just find those helpful thoughts and materials to yourself. Just my views. Good luck.
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Befreeinyourway,justliketheshinninglighteveryday.
4楼2014-04-13 14:59:15
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