復旦百萬年薪院長金力說：回國大潮沒有一流科學家沒有一流研究

《科學》雜誌發表文章，介紹華人回國潮。採訪了回國科學家。其中，復旦大學百萬年薪招聘的生命科學院院長、中國科學院計算生物研究所所長金力說：回國的科學家中，沒有明星，沒有一流大學的教授，也沒有做一流研究的人。
金力本人原來是辛辛那提大學正教授。
The returnees so far, however, are not superstars. Few "are from first-tier universities and/or doing first-rate work," says Li Jin, a population geneticist who relinquished a full professorship at the University of Cincinnati to become dean of life sciences at Fudan University in Shanghai.

科學原文：
Science 22 September 2006:
Vol. 313. no. 5794, pp. 1722 - 1723
DOI: 10.1126/science.313.5794.1722
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News Focus
SCIENTIFIC WORKFORCE:
Many Overseas Chinese Researchers Find Coming Home a Revelation
Dennis Normile

SHANGHAI--"When I left China to study abroad, I thought I had left China for good," says neuroscientist Shigang He. Yet, after earning his Ph.D. and landing a permanent research position in Australia, He started having second thoughts. A visit to a Chinese institute astounded him. Labs were bulging with new equipment and feverish with activity. And funding for individual researchers was nearly on a par with his in Australia. He made several trips back to China, he says, "to make sure I wasn't deluded." Then he did something once unthinkable for a Chinese scientist established abroad: He resigned from the University of Queensland, sold his house in Brisbane, and joined the Institute of Neuroscience in Shanghai, a part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

"I've never regretted it," says He, who is now with the CAS Institute of Biophysics in Beijing. "For my research, and personally, it was a good decision."

He's not alone. Although numbers are hard to come by, repatriated scientists are multiplying. Officials at the Institute of Health Sciences, a part of CAS's Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences (SIBS), say a third of the two dozen primary investigators who have joined the institute since its founding 4 years ago had given up permanent jobs overseas. "It is definitely a new trend, not only at SIBS but throughout China," says SIBS President Gang Pei.

Those returning to their roots say the trend indicates how far Chinese science has come in catching up with the West. "It is no longer true that a faculty position in China is less competitive than one in the U.S.," asserts Jianmin Zhou, a molecular plant biologist who left an associate professorship at Kansas State University, Manhattan, for a position at the National Institute of Biological Sciences in Beijing. In China, midcareer returnees bridge a gap between young scientists trained abroad and high-profile veterans who spend a few months a year in China as advisers. "These midcareer people help China" with their experience and administrative skills, says Pei.

The returnees so far, however, are not superstars. Few "are from first-tier universities and/or doing first-rate work," says Li Jin, a population geneticist who relinquished a full professorship at the University of Cincinnati to become dean of life sciences at Fudan University in Shanghai. And returnees spurn offers from any but the top institutions in cosmopolitan Beijing and Shanghai.

Making a choice. Population geneticist Li Jin gave up a U.S. tenured professorship to become dean of the School of Life Sciences at Fudan University.
CREDIT: COURTESY OF LI JIN

Deciding to come home usually starts with a realization of how quickly the research landscape in China is improving. "Support for research by most agencies in China doubled this year," says Jin. "The pressure for getting grants [abroad] is one of the major reasons that drives people back to China." The funding now offered a new scientist to set up a lab in China roughly matches that of a U.S. university, adds He. Individual grants may be smaller, but money goes further in China too. Scientists also rave about the quality of students. "Many Chinese faculty … have better students than their peers in the U.S.," says Zhou. Part of the appeal is helping shape China's science future. Guo-Tong Xu, once an assistant professor at the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth and now deputy director of SIBS's Institute of Health Sciences, boasts that his institute is the first in China dedicated to translational research, bridging the gap between basic and clinical research.
Some scientists return to pursue opportunities that are illegal or not encouraged in the United States and other countries because of ethical concerns. Hui Zhen Sheng returned in 1999 after 10 years at the U.S. National Institutes of Health when the Shanghai government made an offer "too good to decline": to fund a stem cell lab for her at Shanghai Second Medical University. Sheng is working on therapeutic cloning of human embryonic stem cells using animal eggs.

Similarly, stem cell research brought Hongkui Deng back. Deng left China in 1989 to study immunology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and later became research director for ViaCell Inc., a biotech firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Finding the corporate world "quite restrictive," Deng in 2001 joined Beijing University, where he is trying to coax human embryonic stem cells to differentiate into beta cells for treating diabetes. "Stem cell biology is a new field, so China is at the same starting line as everybody else," says Deng.

Some scientists try to keep a foot in both worlds, before deciding that China is where they want to be. In 1997, Jin set up a field station at Fudan, his alma mater, to collect DNA from China's diverse populations. In 2003, he was made dean and began splitting his time between continents. "It was really stressful to maintain two laboratories," he says. In 2005, Jin resigned from Cincinnati and moved with his family to Shanghai.

There are downsides for midcareer returnees. Salaries are smaller, for example, although a low cost of living can compensate. And whereas Chinese universities grant tenure to all faculty members, at many CAS institutes new researchers must pass reviews after several years before getting a permanent job, even if they gave up a tenured position in the West.

Middle-aged scientists also typically have families to consider. Xu recalls that his elder son had a tough time adjusting to fifth grade when the family returned from the United States in 1997. Xu's colleague, geneticist Ji Zhang, who gave up a tenured job at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha in 2002, left his wife and 17-year-old son in the States so the boy could continue his education there. "It would be difficult for my son now to adapt to life in China," Zhang says.

Lifestyle issues cut both ways. Jin says, half-jokingly, that he returned for the food. The best Chinese restaurants in Cincinnati can't match Fudan's student cafeteria, he notes. On the other hand, he and his family squeezed into an apartment one-tenth the size of their Cincinnati home. "I've been trying to convince my kids that it's not quite right for just a few people to have lived in such a big house," he says. For Jin and other midcareer returnees, cramped apartments are a small price to pay for big opportunities in China's growing research enterprise.