Interview with Drs. Xiaowei Jin & Zhenzhou Guo, a.k.a. Mr. And Mrs. Zhenzhou Guo

X.Q: What did you like or miss most about USTC: faculty, students?

Xiaowei & Zhenzhou: USTC has an academic environment set by the faculty and the school administration that encouraged free and creative thinking. Furthermore, we also enjoyed the most talented student pool in the country that raised the bar for class performance.

X.Q: For Xiaowei, you switched from P. Chem to Biochemistry, any specific reason? Similarly, to Zhenzhou, you were physics major and received a Ph.D. in physics, what were the important factors that led you to Johnson/MBA?

Xiaowei: My interest had changed and felt that research in life science bares more direct impact on everyday life.

Zhenzhou: My decision was largely driven by the job market, also because of the growing interest in financial market and strong Chinese economy.

X.Q: For Xiaowei, you worked at Harvard Medical School and are now in the biotech industry, would you describe some tangible differences between the two kinds of research environment?

Xiaowei: They are very different. Industry research is product centric and has shorter time frame while academic research focuses on data and usually does not have time constraint.

X.Q: Also while as a postdoc at Harvard, you won a NIH fellowship, published one "Cell" paper and gave birth to your son, was it manageable and how did you do it?

Xiaowei: As a postdoc in Harvard, you sure have a lot of pressure both from your "demanding" boss and from your hard-working peers, but all these do set up a higher bar and once you get used to it, everything is manageable. It all depends on how you look at it. I enjoyed my postdoc work a lot because I was constantly learning new stuff, becoming more and more independent. And I also think I was quite lucky to work on a very promising project in a very productive lab, but I really don't think the amount of time spending in the lab is proportional to the outcomes that you generated. More time should be spending on the careful design of experiment to avoid waste of time. Also, if you get yourself exhausted by working over 80 hours a week all the time, I bet you cannot function well both mentally and physically.

X.Q.: You had a very good chance in landing a tenure-track faculty position, what made you choose industry? Would you recommend newcomers industry or academia? Or more specifically, what kind of personal factors do you think are important in making the choices: family, location etc.? What aspects in the industry do you like most? What do you dislike most? Do you get to publish? Do you go to conferences? What kind of career prospects later on?

Xiaowei: For several reasons I chose my current position: Most importantly, because of my family. We all enjoyed the city of Boston, especially the culture and many intelligent people around us. Biogen is a very established biotech company and its location plus makes our life so much easier; we really don't want to spend hours on commuting each day. I want to spend more time with my baby, watching him growing-up. Secondly, although I enjoyed my postdoc work, I was still doing very basic science. I got the industry job offer that can allow me to do something really meaningful, at least in the short term-to discover and develop drugs that benefit the human being. Lastly, in industry, you don't need to worry about your funding. I hate to spend so much time on writing grants, which unfortunately is inevitable if you choose academia. The most valuable experience I have learned so far in industry is to be a good "team player": participation, contribution. You can learn a lot by being on a good project team such as the different stages of drug discovery process including clinically trials. You also have a very good chance to practice your management skill if you like. There are pits and falls in almost everything. In industry, because of patent or confidentiality reasons, you can not publish whatever you want, particularly if you're (like me now) working on a highly competitive, late stage project. Briefly, you don't have as much flexibility or control with your work as you have in academia. When it comes to conferences, you're even more flexible than academia, as long as you can justify your trip (that's very easy to do if you work on multiple projects). Money is never an issue. Big companies like Biogen do offer opportunities to work on basic science if you like, which is very much like academia. Depending upon the projects you're working on, a typical day in industry is no much different from academic (maybe just a little shorter, that is in fact a good thing for me). The only difference might be that you have more meetings, but you can avoid most of them if you don't like them. Again, whether to go to industry or stay in academia, it all depends on your individual interest and personal situations. Before you decide, ask yourself: work or family, which is your first priority?

X.Q.: For Zhenzhou, you chose Cornell's MBA program, was it solely because it was a one-year program tailored specifically for people with technical degrees? How did you like it?

Zhenzhou: The combination of one year program and overall Cornell reputation. Looking back, I still believe that I made the right choice for my situation. The learning experience was great.

X.Q.: Would you recommend it to other USTC students, who most likely have technical backgrounds?

Zhenzhou: I certainly wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to my fellow USTCers. However, one-year program has its own disadvantage especially for people without business experience. The decision should be made by evaluating all other alternatives and on an individual basis.

X.Q.: In your opinion, what's Johnson's strength/weakness? What do you value most from the MBA program? What kind of opportunities did the MBA degree offer you and how did you pick commercial banking business? Would you give a description of your daily job?

Zhenzhou: Johnson School has first class faculties who really care about teaching and are available to students. The overall atmosphere is also very friendly. The weakness I see is its location, which is a bit remote for such kind of professional school. The program helped my transition from academic research to business world by providing the following: 1. A formal business training which somewhat offset my weakness of having no business experience; 2. Access to numerous job opportunities which I did not have staying in a physics lab; 3. Strategic thinking that helped my advancement down the road. Commercial bank is rich on data so I can leverage my quantitative skills in its business decision making. It also has a balanced life style and less stress when compared with industries such as consulting and investment. My current daily job includes meeting with other business managers to identify their analytical need and deliver recommendations to them after doing analysis, managing a team of analysts on a variety of business modeling projects, managing vendors to design, and making changes to information technology infrastructure to meet our business need.

X.Q.: How would you advise someone who is planning to start study in a MBA program in terms of career choices?

Zhenzhou: MBA certainly adds value and many options in career development. The selection of a job function should be based on life goal and prior background. There are usually trade-offs among different jobs. Again I suggest balance and optimization by considering all factors such as compensation, learning opportunity, level of stress and personal strength.

X.Q.: Back to USTC, what do you view as the best approach(es)? in trying to maintain USTC's high ranking in China? Should USTC expand and add social sciences? What can we alumni do?

Zhenzhou: I think it's very challenging to restore the kind of glory we had before in today's environment. USTC's location is a big problem. As the economy becomes more market driven, the school has difficulties in competing in many of the applied fields for historical reasons. An extra year in length also alienated many top students when people focus more on value and return. On the other hand, we still have a good reputation and a solid foundation in science education. Thousands of overseas alumni could be a significant resource that most other schools don't have. Our suggestions would be to shorten college program length, to gain more international exposure (conferences, exchange scholarship, etc.), and give more emphasis on inter-discipline subjects and applied science such as information technology and decision science. However, expansion of new areas should leverage the strength of USTC. We alumni certainly can help in many ways. Besides donation, we truly believe we should increase our level of participation such as knowledge transferring and career guidance. The school should also put more resource in managing and promote alumni relationships and provide all the conveniences.

X.Q.: I believe USTC has started some changes such as shortening the five-year undergraduate curriculum to the regular four-year. The Alumni Foundation is also setting up the Global Alumni Network that is expected to achieve the goals you mentioned: knowledge transferring and career guidance, etc. We hope that more and more alumni will become involved in this network so that it will be more effective and powerful in help enhance USTC's reputation.