An interview with Professor Francois Taddei in SYSU on WiserU

[Yi Zhang]

>     小林 a écrit :
>     > Dear professor Francois  Taddei，
>     >
>     >      Welcome to Sun Yat-sen University <http://www.nsysu.edu.tw/>  to give 
>     > lectures and thank you for sharing your ideas with us. My name is Lin si. And I 
>     > am the girl from the journal of the school of life science .  Here are my questions
>     >
>     >  
>     >
>     > 1.      What  is wiser U ? What is it for？And why did you choose China to make 
>     > a further study on it ?
>       
   F:    WISER-U (read wiser you) means _W_orld-wide _I_nteractions for _S_cience
    _E_dcuation and _R_esearch in Universities. Of course it also mean that we
    would like every students to spend some time to become wiser. China is a
    great place to develop such a project because it has very nice campuses like
    in Beijing or Canto,n with so many students motivated to become wiser, 
    study, do research and develop projects. It started only a few months ago in
    a summer school in Beida, When wiser-u project will reach its maturity it
    will allow any students to find, store and exchange interesting materials
    and ideas and to meet like minded students locally and globally so that they
    can discuss their ideas and develop their projects.
>     >
>     >  
>     >
>     > 2.      You are stressing your idea of interdisciplinary communication and 
>     > cooperation .Can you share how you apply it into your  research and  make it 
>     > effective in your group .( Actually ,when I once heard about this thought, it 
>     > came to my mind that all  of the labs in my college ,or even in the whole 
>     > university  link together,It will be another appearance of research .)
>       
   F: Collective intelligence is the key. My favorite proverb says "none of us
    alone is as smart as all of us together. This is true of indviduals but also
    of different disciplines. In my lab I have postdoc and students that have
    very different background (humanities, biology, chemistry, physics, math,
    computer sciences). Together they collaborate and develop projects that
    could never be done by any one alone. By collaborating with many labs around
    the world we are able to get the best approaches integrated to move
    innovative research ahead much faster.
>     >
>     >  
>     >
>     > 3.      I In Sun Yat-sen University , many students are thinking about studying 
>     > aboard .If you want to recruit a foreign student into your research. what is the 
>     > most important thing  you will think about?  Will the highest score be the 
>     > priority? Can you tell something about your teaching style?
>        
    F: The motivation, the creativity and the ability to cooperate and ask good
    questions are key for me. The score does not mean much as it reflects only
    the ability to memorise or solve classical questions. It does not say
    anything about how well can a student do when he or she faces the unknown.
    About the teaching style we develop, we do not put the emphasis on day
    science, ie the science of known facts but on night science ie the ability
    to do research , to explore the frontiers of knowledge. The day science part
    is easier than ever to access via the web, so you can check it when you need
    rather than memorise it by rote learning. We tecah our students to learn how
    to learn, to be creative to work in groups, to criticise each other
    constructively to use their collective intelligence to move ahead.
>     >
>     >  
>     >
>     > 4.      How so you get to the point of spreading interdisciplinary communication 
>     > and cooperation ?what are the major chanllenges during the process ?what are the 
>     > major process you got during the international and interdisciplinary communication ?
>       
    F: The major individual hurdle is self-censorship, students are often not
    daring enough to explore , their main barrier is a mental one. The major
    collective difficulty is to create a collective of complementary brains that
    respect each other and bring their complementary skills to adrees jointly
    some questions. The major institutional hurdle is to have the time to do it.
    The best is to get the support of enlighten leaders that understand that tin
    today's world you should build creative spaces and interdisciplinary
    programs to let the students explore new frontiers that keep changing such
    as web sciences, synthetic and systems biology, environmental sciences etc
    to let the motivated students  adress the problems of the 21st century with
    all possible ressources that can have been developped in the past by so many
    different disciplines.

>     >
>     >  
>     >
>     > 5.      How do you think about you travel at Sun Yat-sen University 
>     > ? Have you reach your previous aim on it ? Do you have 
>     > future plans for collaborating with Sun Yat-sen University 
>     > <http://www.nsysu.edu.cn/> ?
>       
    F: SYSU has beautiful campuses, very good professors and top students so it has
    been an honnor to be here. For me it is a pleasure to see that students can
    contribute to organise a vist for foreign professors and get organised in
    their associations. I hope they will be given the opportunity and the means
    to develop their projects further as is done on the best world univeristies.
    I bet that SYSU will climb even higher if it manages to develop the
    fantastic  potential of its most creative students. I have seen both in
    Beida and in Paris that within a year students can reach the highest world
    achievements when theyr are given the opportunities to use their collective
    intelligence to create the future. After having spedn long days and nights
    discussing with SYSU students and professors,  I am sure the same can happen
    here if the right environment is built to let project emerge.
>     >
>     >  
>     >
>     >  
>     >
>     > *If you have time ,please  think more about the following questions .*
>     >
>     >  
>     >
>     > 6.      What is dedicated to stimulate your efforts on resource sharing , 
>     > creative education and research? Have a story behind?
>     >
>     >  
>     >
>     > 7.      How to integrate the advanced information technology with the real life 
>     > community? Can you give some example ?
>     >
>     > 8.      What type of person will best fit for your interdisciplinary 
>     > communication and thinking  ?
>     >
>     > 9.       During the sharing of resources , have you think maybe some malicious 
>     > competition will appear? How do you deal with it?
>     >
>     >  
>     >
>     > Finally ，thanks for your answering and hope that your wiser U can be seen on 
>     > Google website so that everyone can share together .Wiser you, and wiser me 
>     > ,wiser everyone.
>     >
>     > Yours
>     >
>     > LINSI
>     >
>     >  
>     >
>     >  
>     >
>     >  
>     >
>     >  
>     >
>     >  
>     >
>     >   
>       




-- 
Zhang Yi (章 益)
Dept. of Physics
and Center for Theoretical Biology
Peking University.
Address: Chang chun xin yuan 1# 636, Peking University, Beijing, P.R.China 100871
Telephone Number:+86-10-52763033
Mobile Number: +86-13811680380
Email: zhang...@gmail.com <mailto:zhang...@gmail.com>
  

--
Zhang Yi (章 益)
Dept. of Physics
and Center for Theoretical Biology
Peking University.
Address: Chang chun xin yuan 1# 636, Peking University, Beijing, P.R.China 100871
Telephone Number:+86-10-52763033
Mobile Number: +86-13811680380
Email: zhang...@gmail.com