Biology a model in scholar's life

A major transformation? The answer is yes and no, according to Waxman.

"From my point of view, I am a theoretician. For theoretical physics, you do calculations, you do sums. Now I am a theoretician in biology, I do calculations and I do sums," he says.

His work represents a bold interdisciplinary subject, only in its infancy in China.

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During a recent meeting between China's top political leader Xi Jinping and foreign experts, he handed in two proposals.

One is regarding the names of researchers on a scientific paper. Waxman found it problematic that in China, only the first and the last author who appear on a research dissertation count. The mechanism will deter teamwork as people will be worried that if their names are somewhere in the middle, their effort will not be recognized.

Waxman says changing the system will increase the probability that senior professors across different disciplines will collaborate with each other.

The other concern he has is Chinese students staying up late into the night. He suggests that, at least for some courses, the focus should shift from facts to basic principles and application of the principles.

"Here, people work fairly rigidly between certain subject boundaries," he says. "I'd like to see more courses that are interdisciplinary, giving students a bit of whatever that is needed to make progress."

Waxman has been an early advocate of cross-subject education. During biology courses, he explicitly includes some mathematical models so students realize their usefulness and importance. When he talks to mathematics majors, he emphasizes the different implications from physics, biology and environmental studies.

But above all, he wants to influence young students by training them in a different way.

He recently leveraged on his resources abroad to organize an international symposium on mathematical biology at Fudan. He is looking forward to holding more such events next year to form a bridge between Chinese and foreign scientists.

Upon getting the chance to work in China, he was thrilled to collaborate with people from a whole different culture, to teach and learn from them.

In his view, China presents this huge opportunity to feel free to think big, to experiment with cutting-edge ideas, and to introduce advanced technologies.

At the foreign experts' meeting, he was astonished that Xi Jinping knew his name, his school and asked about his job.

"It was definitely a remarkable moment of my life. He (Xi) behaved with great confidence, but also modestly. He listened, he commented on what people said and took notes," Waxman says.