UC Irvine microbiologist Alex McPherson is in Beijing, China, to help to teach “X-Ray Methods in Structural Biology,” a distinguished course that’s normally taught at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories on Long Island, N.Y. The Chinese Academy of Sciences asked Cold Spring officials to teach the course this year in Beijing. McPherson filed this report from the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Biophysics.

The course at Cold Spring Harbor every year has 16 students chosen from about 75 applicants from the most outstanding molecular and structural biology laboratories in the world, both University, Institute, and private sector. The course here in Beijing has 26 students in the “hands on” course (the most that we could handle, actually more, but what the hell) but there are another 140 students that attend the lectures.

The course runs from 9 in the morning until about 10 at night, sometimes later. It’s intense. The students for the course have come from scientific institutes and universities all over China, though Beijing and Shanghai are well represented. Almost all, in this course, are graduate students, all speak passable to excellent English, all hope, someday, to train further in the United States or (second choice) in Europe.

Today (May 3) we are into the fifth day of the course and all is going surprisingly well, given the logistical issues involved. We have to innovate along the way and do things on the fly, but oddly enough, things always seem to work out OK. Some low tech things turn out to be hard to come by, other complex things in full supply. The Institute was unable to find any transparencies for overhead projectors, a desk drawer item in the US, so we cut up plastic sheets with razor blades. On the other hand, the X-ray equipment at the Institute (the absolute biggest and best that money could buy) far exceed any instruments for X-ray data collection that we have at UC Irvine (which, admittedly, are rather pitiful).

I love the students. These are kids that have really brought their bats and gloves and are ready to play. They are uncommonly courteous, respectful, intensely interested in wringing the most out of every experience. This is one of the great chances of their lives, and they know it. At the end of every one of my lectures (usually 1 ½ hours long) I am invariably surrounded by students pounding me with questions, or requesting intricate clarifications for 45 minutes or more. It is intensely satisfying, however, for a teacher to teach people who want so badly to learn.

I was somewhat surprised to find that the abilities and training of the students in mathematics and physics was less than I expected, but about comparable to UCI students in biochemistry (I teach Advanced Biochemistry 114 at UCI). On the other hand, their computer skills were exceptional. They were helping me with mine more often than not. These kids live on the internet. I think that because of the population density here, they don’t have the recreational opportunities that US kids enjoy, so they live much of their lives in the virtual kingdom. They are very good.

Although they have the top of the line laboratory instruments and equipment, and exceed most American university labs in that regard, they still come up a bit short by some other standards. The labs are crowded, small items in short supply, infrastructure not as good as it might be, simple things lacking. The professors are somewhat remote from the students and post docs, learning relies too much on the mentoring of new students by old. Similar problems exist in our labs as well, but I think they are somewhat more acute in China.

An interesting phenomenon, is the return of successful young Chinese scientists from the US and Europe to Chinese institutions. Until recently, the idea of a young scientist going to the US, becoming trained, becoming successful in the US, and then returning to China was virtually unheard of. Now it is happening, and, indeed, the ratio of US trained (or those who have some extensive experience in the US or Europe) research directors in China to those trained exclusively in China is great. They are coming back because the opportunity for them is greater here. In addition, this is, after all, their native home, the opportunities for research funding for individual scientists is certainly better in China than in the US, and qualified, interested students are plentiful.

Some things that are not yet competitive with either Europe or the US are the national facilities. This morning, as a field trip, the instructors and students visited the Beijing synchrotron facility at the Institute for Science and Technology on the west side of Beijing, one of a very few such facilities in the country. It lags by many years the sophistication and quality, in almost every regard, the synchrotron facilities that I, and my laboratory at UCI, frequently use at Berkeley and Stanford. Although new synchrotron facilities are about to come on line in Shanghai, and will be a considerable advance, the gap with the US and Europe in this regard will almost certainly persist for many years. You can’t throw these things together overnight.

In spite of the numbers and the density, the students remain remarkably patient, cooperative and good humored. They are what will make this course a success (and it will be a success), and I admire their tenacity. I don’t believe that I ever faced the challenges that they do when I was coming up through the academic-scientific system in the US. They carry out their experiments in spite of having their elbows bumped. Students who couldn’t be accommodated in the practical part of the course, but are sitting in on the lectures, are already asking us when we coming back to hold the course again.

These students are going to be the scientific leaders of tomorrow’s China. Most will come to the US for advanced training, most will hold dear the opportunities that the US will offer them, and I believe all will appreciate what we have tried to do here. I honestly feel that what we are accomplishing these three weeks in China is among the greatest contributions that I have made to science during by academic career. Tomorrow I give three more hours of lectures tomorrow afternoon and have a practical exercise scheduled to begin at 8:30 tomorrow evening. I’d better get some sleep

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