Peking University, Dec. 17, 2012: The employment situation and career planning have always been a key issue closely tied to the future development of the doctoral candidates in life sciences. To broaden students’ horizon on this issue, PKU School of Life Sciences held a themed seminar —“Doctor, let’s make life better!” on December 11. The seminar was aimed at offering more opportunities for the doctoral students to communicate with elite in this field and providing illuminating instructions for them to develop their potential to the fullest.

“Science is conversation, science is social,” said Ji Maoye on the seminar, the CEO of the Cold Spring Harbor Asia (CSH, Asia).By telling his experience with top scientists, Doctor Ji attached great importance to the ability to discuss with other people, introduce one’s own work and collect useful information about the new trend in life sciences from international conferences. In his opinion, besides working hard doctoral students should also learn to communicateif they want a better future.

Doctor Ji Maoye

Then Doctor Tong Cheng from Pfizer unveiled the ideas and work patterns of Pfizer as an international pharmaceutical company according to his own working experience. His report covered the difficulties faced by pharmaceutical factories and the solutions to them. In addition, he answered students’ questions about career planning by sharing his experience of choosing his career.

 Doctor Tong Cheng

Finally, Chairman of Academic Committee, Center for Life Sciences (CLS) Tang Chao gave his lecture by remarking on the prevailing confusion and inner struggle among doctoral candidates and telling the life plan of one of his American friends. He invited all doctoral students to figure out whether they would like to devote a whole lifetime to scientific research. If one finds this question hard to answer, perhaps he needs more time to think about it. According to him, personal interest is always the first thing to consider instead of the prevailing trend of a time.

Professor Tang Chao

Professor Tang said this lecture differed from many lectures he had given before in that it was more student-aimed. Thus, he cared more about listening than speaking, focusing on the problems students encountered. Therefore, after his brief speech, three lecturers stepped up to the platform and started a heated discussion with the audience. Various questions were brought up by students and all ended up with satisfactory answers.

This seminar has attracted teachers and students from Peking University, Tsinghua University, National Institute of Biological Science, Beijingand other institutions. It opened a window for doctoral candidates and other students to pursue a better and more meaningful life by triggering their reflection on future careers.

Written by: Li Chiyang

Edited by: XuXinyi

Source: PKU News (Chinese)