Fudan University: Aiming at "extraordinary layout", talent evaluation "shifts"
2024-08-22
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Craig Anderson, global leader in stroke research, renowned clinical neuroscientist, and vice president of the World Stroke Organization
This summer, Craig Anderson, a well-known clinical neuroscientist and vice president of the World Stroke Organization who has joined Fudan University full-time, is extremely busy. From recruiting postdoctoral fellows to setting up his own laboratory, he always feels that he does not have enough time. "I hope to integrate advanced technologies such as neural regulation and brain-computer interface with clinical research, accelerate the application transformation of basic research, and cultivate outstanding young talents who can meet the challenges of the next decade."
At the same time, four top scientists from all over the world are also going through the entry procedures. They are about to become the leaders of the new disciplines and research directions that Fudan is currently developing.
"We must establish a discipline adjustment mechanism and talent training model driven by scientific and technological development and national strategic needs, and make an extraordinary layout of urgently needed disciplines and majors. Talent must come first. For colleges and universities, on the one hand, they must increase efforts to attract talent and gather top talents. On the other hand, they must pay special attention to independently cultivating top talents." A relevant person in charge of the school said in an interview with reporters.
From looking at "hats" to looking at "matching"
Talent is the foundation for improving the scientific and technological innovation capabilities of universities. According to the Talent Office of Fudan University, more than 80 scholars have joined Fudan University in the first half of this year, 70% of whom are urgently needed talents in basic disciplines and new engineering disciplines that the university is focusing on.
According to relevant school officials, in the past, many departments’ criteria for attracting talent were mainly based on “titles” and the number of papers. Because according to the subject evaluation standards, these indicators are closely related to subject rankings. But in recent years, the situation has changed significantly. The school has gradually integrated talent planning with department development planning and the school’s subject layout planning. “The goal of subject construction and layout is not for ranking, but must be in line with the school’s overall development goals, help solve ‘bottleneck’ technical problems, and meet the development needs of Shanghai’s three leading industries: integrated circuits, biomedicine, and artificial intelligence. This has also become the school’s current standard for talent introduction.”
Take Fudan University's traditional strong discipline of chemistry as an example. In recent years, around the development of new materials, biotechnology and artificial intelligence, the discipline of chemistry has produced new "growth points", which are crucial to the development of integrated circuits and biomedicine. "On the basis of maintaining our advantageous disciplines, we continue to strengthen new directions such as new materials and chemical biology. Both talents and resources are tilted and invested in these fields." Professor Zhou Mingfei, director of the Department of Chemistry, told reporters that in the past five years, the Department of Chemistry has introduced more than 10 top talents in the field of chemical biology. At the same time, the department is also constantly increasing its efforts to cultivate young leading talents.
For example, in response to the rapidly developing discipline of artificial intelligence, the school systematically sorted out the global artificial intelligence talent map and made full use of the special basic research zone. At present, top scholars from multiple fields such as computational social science, artificial intelligence system software, and artificial intelligence trusted computing have joined Fudan full-time. Among them, Gao Yue, vice chairman of the Wireless Communications Technical Committee (IEEE ComSoc), has established a new research institute after joining the school and is leading the team to carry out space communication research.
From counting "results" to striving for "determination"
In Fudan Bay Valley, the Xianghui Research Institute, which is about to be completed with a renovation, is a special existence: there are no laboratories here, but there are shared offices where visiting scholars can move in at any time, as well as cafes, tea rooms, small meeting rooms with full functions, etc.
In the mind of Zhao Dongyuan, the first president of Xianghui Institute and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, this is a space of academic freedom, a place "where scholars are encouraged to break through traditional limitations and barriers and where sparks are generated by the collision of ideas."
As the first new management service platform to undertake the task of building a highland of basic research in Shanghai universities, Xianghui Research Institute set a goal at the beginning of its establishment in November 2023 - to gather talents from all over the world. The selected scholars will not be evaluated during their 10-year term, but only need to communicate their thoughts and work progress regularly. All institutional arrangements are designed to allow them to explore the truth with peace of mind, deeply cross-integrate, and truly help improve their innovation source capabilities.
Among the first batch of six Xianghui Scholars selected, Professor Lu Buxun from the School of Life Sciences has been making continuous progress in the field of new drugs for neurodegenerative diseases. Earlier this year, the latest scientific research results he published in collaboration with British scholar Luo Shouqing also had an important impact on the diagnosis and treatment of this disease. In addition, the team led by Xu Yanhui from the Institute of Biomedical Sciences is also beginning to explore new research directions such as proteome decoding technology... It is not difficult to find that these young scholars are constantly advancing in their own research fields or intersecting with new disciplines to open up new research directions.
It is reported that the Xianghui Institute will add 8 Xianghui Young Scholars this year. Among them, the youngest scholar, Yang Ying, is only 29 years old this year and has published 4 papers in top journals of applied mathematics. In the new semester, another 4 top scientists will join full-time.
From "Talents Follow Resources" to "Resources Follow Talents"
Not long ago, two researchers from the Institute of Chip and System Frontier Technology at Fudan University, Zhou Peng and Liu Chunsen, led their team to achieve a major breakthrough in the large-scale integration of nanosecond programmable flash memory, which is considered to be "a high-speed non-volatile storage technology that can change the era of artificial intelligence." Liu Chunsen is the youngest scholar supported by Fudan's Basic Research Special Zone Program, and he was only 29 years old when he was selected.
Over the past two years, a group of young scholars have continuously produced excellent research results. The reason for this is closely related to the school's "shift": changing the situation in which "talent follows resources" for a long period of time in the past, and truly allowing "resources to follow talents, especially young talents."
In the field of basic research, the school combines the Shanghai Basic Research Special Zone Plan to lay out the key basic research directions for development, and selects a group of outstanding leading talents and young talents with creativity and innovative spirit every year. Fudan provides comprehensive support and guarantees for outstanding leading talents, and supports them to bravely enter the "no man's land" with "one person, one policy", carry out exploratory and risky basic research, and promote original innovation from "0 to 1"; for young scientists, the school encourages the exploration of cross-integration fields and impacts major international scientific issues. In the past two years, the school has invested a total of 116 million yuan to support 85 young talents in the field of basic research.
At the same time, these support projects do not set application limits according to departments or disciplines, and the selected scientists have sufficient resources and autonomy. At present, Fudan has selected and funded 37 basic research projects targeting original cutting-edge scientific issues in the fields of mathematics, physics, chemistry, etc., with an average age of 37. During the project review process, an expert specifically proposed that "we look forward to their production of more new results representing China's participation in global scientific and technological competition."
Author: Jiang Peng
Text: Jiang Peng Editor: Fu Lu
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