Professor Xuetao Cao and Hongbing Shu have won the 2015 Nature Awards for Mentoring in Science
Source：CSI
2016-01-10
In recognition of the vision, dedication and hard work of those charged with nurturing the next generation of Chinese researchers, the 2015 Nature Awards for Mentoring in Science honour five researchers in China. The lifetime-achievement award for northern China was shared between immunologist Xuetao Cao, president of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, and plant scientist Xingwang Deng. The winner for southern China is electroanalytical chemist Hongyuan Chen. In the mid-career category, awards for northern and southern China went, respectively, to structural biologist Yigong Shi, and immunologist Hongbing Shu at Wuhan University.
One trait shared by all the winners is an understanding that the only authority in science is evidence, and that conventional wisdom must always be open to question. “We should inspire students to have confidence to challenge the dogma in textbook and address fundamental questions in science,” Cao says. “Professor Cao often said that creativity comes from different directions with different views,” Weilin Chen says, a cancer immunologist at Zhejiang University and one of Cao’s former PhD students at the Second Military Medical University in Shanghai. “And he treats everyone, regardless of whether they are a PhD student or a visiting scholar, with the same high regard.”
Shu thinks that patience and perseverance are among the most important traits of good mentorship, something he learnt from one of his own mentors: his PhD supervisor, Harish Joshi, a cell biologist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. “I have always remembered what he told me when I was in his lab. ‘Do not fire them; fire them up!’,” Shu recalls. “In my 17-years’ mentoring life, I have never given up on any one of my students.”
One trait shared by all the winners is an understanding that the only authority in science is evidence, and that conventional wisdom must always be open to question. “We should inspire students to have confidence to challenge the dogma in textbook and address fundamental questions in science,” Cao says. “Professor Cao often said that creativity comes from different directions with different views,” Weilin Chen says, a cancer immunologist at Zhejiang University and one of Cao’s former PhD students at the Second Military Medical University in Shanghai. “And he treats everyone, regardless of whether they are a PhD student or a visiting scholar, with the same high regard.”
Shu thinks that patience and perseverance are among the most important traits of good mentorship, something he learnt from one of his own mentors: his PhD supervisor, Harish Joshi, a cell biologist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. “I have always remembered what he told me when I was in his lab. ‘Do not fire them; fire them up!’,” Shu recalls. “In my 17-years’ mentoring life, I have never given up on any one of my students.”
