周恩来的八个经典幽默:最漂亮的女人在我家里# Joke - 肚皮舞运动
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Interview with Dr. Yiran Chen
I think I could say that whoever knows Dr. Chen, personally or
professionally, would agree that his career, while still in a young and
aspiring stage, is purely legendary. I’m excited to find out what I’m
going to learn from him today.
Fiona: After you have graduated from Purdue with a Ph.D., you worked in
industry for five years. Why did you decide to go back to academia?
Dr. Chen: I was asked this question by many of my colleagues and students.
The truth is that the research lab I was working in was dismissed during the
last economic crisis. The company deployed all the researchers to product
departments as R&D engineers, including me. However, having been “spoiled”
by the freedom offered by the research lab, I was unable and unwilling to
adapt myself to the life of an ordinary engineer. So after nine months, I
quit and joined my current university. The manager did not even know I had a
Ph.D. until my resignation, or maybe they simply did not care.
Fiona: When people talk about your achievements, they often mention your
wife, who’s an equally accomplished engineer in the same field. How would
you describe your professional relationship with her?
Dr. Chen: My wife is my (without “one of the”) best partner in my career.
We had the same Ph.D. Advisor at Purdue, and now we are working in the same
department of our institution. As a couple, we simply 100% trust each other
in all aspects. (Fiona commented: That can be boring sometimes.) For example
, you never need to worry about if your editing on her draft would harm her
feeling. I think both of us benefit significantly from this mutual trust,
which makes our collaboration extremely efficient.
Fiona: Do you two discuss about work at home? Who wins more often when
disputes occur?
Dr. Chen: Yes, we do discuss about work at home. We have many divergences in
our work, but we always manage to reach an agreement when attending to the
students. Neither of us always wins, though my wife claims she is the one
who often gives in (which is questionable, in my humble opinion).
Fiona: “Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking
outward together in the same direction.” (Antoine de Saint-Exupery) Related
to the last question, what do you think is the overall condition of
engineering women in industry or academia, in terms of competence,
promotional opportunities, peer recognition, etc.?
Dr. Chen: Women are normally considered as “minorities” in engineering.
Under this presumption, the current systems of both industry and academia
provide women engineers and professors with many additional opportunities.
In fact, I think academia offers even more than industry through creating
special programs or considerations in hiring and research funding. A female
engineer or professor is also more visible (say, easier to be noticed or
remembered) during daily working contacts. Nonetheless, female engineers and
professors often encounter more difficulties when being considered for
administrative positions.
Fiona: Do they tend to be better or worse than men with regard to certain
skills?
Dr. Chen: In academia, my observation is that female professors are more
aggressive (of course, not everyone) than their counterparts in industry. I
am not sure whether it means that academic life is harsher, or only the “
aggressive” women would choose academia. I don’t see any difference
between male or female engineers from technical perspectives, but apparently
female engineers take more responsibilities for their families than male
engineers. That may explain some of our observations.
Fiona: Your 35-page single-spaced CV told me you must be a genius as well as
an extremely busy person. How could you find time for serving as journal
editors, conference organizers, panel reviewers, and numerous service and
dissertation committees, while maintaining high productivity with several
ongoing federally funded projects (there are 14 manuscripts under review at
this moment!)? Do you have secrets in time management?
Dr. Chen: You have to prioritize them and attend to the most important tasks
first. Not everything is equally important and their value alters at
different phases of your career. I work hard, of course, but in academia
almost everybody (if not all) is working hard. If I have any secret, I think
that is probably motivating my team effectively: my students participate in
writing proposals, coordinating meetings with collaborators and funding
agencies, and helping with many administrative and logistic duties of mine.
Through learning from these extra activity, they become well prepared for
the “cruel” society they will be facing upon graduation.
Fiona: Considering the short duration you have worked as a college professor
, the number of students and postdocs you have trained is impressive. Do you
mentor them on an individual basis or rely mostly on lab culture and peer
supervision?
Dr. Chen: We have two types of meetings – weekly 1-1’s and small study-
group meetings. We have only one general group meeting per semester because
it is hard to find a meeting room for 40 people and such a meeting is often
inefficient. With a hierarchical personnel structure, senior students help
me mentor the juniors. I monitor students’ research progress though 1-1
meetings, which I try my best to protect even considering my busy travel
schedule, as well as weekly reports. I usually tell them what I want to see
rather than what they need to do. They figure out the details by themselves
or with other students. Luckily, our group is sufficiently large so that
they can always find an expert to answer their questions. I have never laid
off any students (so far), but our peer pressure is huge with so many
productive members. In short, we run as an efficient team, in which
individual genius is not critical.
Fiona: Now that all of you students are productive and competent, can you
tell which ones are more likely to succeed as scientists, which ones should
aim at industrial leadership? Has anyone disappointed you with his/her
decision?
Dr. Chen: First of all, not ALL of them are productive or competent. People
like to imagine that we have different requirements of personal
characteristics for scientists and industry leaders. Unfortunately, this
presumption does not hold. There are common personality traits shared by
both roles: persistence, diligence, teamworking … I am happy as long as my
students become successful, be it academia or industry.
Fiona: Hollywood likes to portrait us scientists as long gray haired nerds
who have little idea about how the society outside our labs functions. Tell
us about the online bookstore you cofounded as a college student. Are you
still participating in the management? Do you have plans for other types of
business in the future?
Dr. Chen: I quit from the online-store business around 2004 and am no longer
a part of the team. Since then, many of the people I worked with have
become important figures in the Chinese Internet industry. That was one of
my most valuable investments in terms of personal connections. In China,
there is a popular saying, “Personal connection is the first productive
force”. Although meant to be a joke, it does state a truth that your
reputations and personal connections are vital for your career, and I
carefully maintain them. In addition, if you have gone through the whole
process of building a startup, you would know whom you want to work with,
what you can and cannot do. I like trying new things, and I will experiment
with some kind of start-up in the future. In fact, I think we have already
come up with some good ideas, and we’ll see.
Fiona: Entrepreneurial mindset is currently a hot topic in the engineering
disciplines. For students who are still pursuing their degrees, do you think
it helps to bring up their awareness of industrial opportunities, risk
management, etc., or would you rather have them focus on basic engineering
skills, e.g., signal processing, without being overly distracted?
Dr. Chen: Although I started my own company when I was a M.S. student, I am
generally against the idea of sacrificing your study for commercial
opportunities. I still remember when I told the advisor of my M.S. thesis
how “successful” my start-up was, he said, “I agree with you that you
might have learned things that extend beyond the scope of school, but the
reason we still need education is that other things, some of which are
essential in the make of a scientist or a businessman, can ONLY be taught at
academia.” Those are the words that will be kept in my mind forever and
shared with my students.
Fiona: Would you also like to share the experience of organizing the concert
for two famous singers at Tsinghua?
Dr. Chen: Ahha! Jian Li and Jie Miao are very famous now, and I’m happy to
have witnessed their growth in our young age and early stage of their career
. I was the producer of that concert, and I still consider it as one of my
proudest accomplishments. You wouldn’t believe we only spent RMB12000
organizing the whole concert, and I still owe one of the two singers RMB2000
for the recording tapes we used.
Fiona: Did the concert bring back enough gross to cover the expenses?
Dr. Chen: No. If I remember correctly, the admission was free because ticket
pricing would have taken a long time to be approved. You can imagine how
hard it was to get a ticket. Many famous singers and musicians attended the
concert: “Lao Lang”, Gengxu Lu, Xiaosong Gao, Jie Li … After the concert,
we had an exclusive party for the rest of the night in a pub named BlueJay
in the university neighborhood. I met Jian and Jie again at the 60th
anniversary party of the department I graduated from, and we were glad to
see all of us doing well in our own careers.
Fiona: An experience like that would certainly be remembered. Could you have
become an artist yourself?
Dr. Chen: My mom has a B.S. degree in music, but I failed to inherit the
talents from her. I enjoy art and music, but I don’t want to pretend to be
an expert.
Fiona: Your research covers the areas of embedded systems, memory and
sensing, nano-devices, etc. Which topic do you think has the potential of
making the largest impact?
Dr. Chen: As computer engineers, my wife and I have started gaining
attentions for our research on emerging memory technologies. We recently
shifted to brain-inspired computing, which is believed to revolutionize the
computer industry by allowing computer to “think” like a human being. We
are still far from this ultimate goal, but we have already seen light above
the horizon. I’d like to use the following sentence to summarize our
research: “I imagine a world where the difference between man and machine
blurs, where the difference between humanity and technology fades, where the
soul and silicon chip unite.” (Raymond Kurzweil, “The Age of Intelligent
Machines”)
I think I could say that whoever knows Dr. Chen, personally or
professionally, would agree that his career, while still in a young and
aspiring stage, is purely legendary. I’m excited to find out what I’m
going to learn from him today.
Fiona: After you have graduated from Purdue with a Ph.D., you worked in
industry for five years. Why did you decide to go back to academia?
Dr. Chen: I was asked this question by many of my colleagues and students.
The truth is that the research lab I was working in was dismissed during the
last economic crisis. The company deployed all the researchers to product
departments as R&D engineers, including me. However, having been “spoiled”
by the freedom offered by the research lab, I was unable and unwilling to
adapt myself to the life of an ordinary engineer. So after nine months, I
quit and joined my current university. The manager did not even know I had a
Ph.D. until my resignation, or maybe they simply did not care.
Fiona: When people talk about your achievements, they often mention your
wife, who’s an equally accomplished engineer in the same field. How would
you describe your professional relationship with her?
Dr. Chen: My wife is my (without “one of the”) best partner in my career.
We had the same Ph.D. Advisor at Purdue, and now we are working in the same
department of our institution. As a couple, we simply 100% trust each other
in all aspects. (Fiona commented: That can be boring sometimes.) For example
, you never need to worry about if your editing on her draft would harm her
feeling. I think both of us benefit significantly from this mutual trust,
which makes our collaboration extremely efficient.
Fiona: Do you two discuss about work at home? Who wins more often when
disputes occur?
Dr. Chen: Yes, we do discuss about work at home. We have many divergences in
our work, but we always manage to reach an agreement when attending to the
students. Neither of us always wins, though my wife claims she is the one
who often gives in (which is questionable, in my humble opinion).
Fiona: “Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking
outward together in the same direction.” (Antoine de Saint-Exupery) Related
to the last question, what do you think is the overall condition of
engineering women in industry or academia, in terms of competence,
promotional opportunities, peer recognition, etc.?
Dr. Chen: Women are normally considered as “minorities” in engineering.
Under this presumption, the current systems of both industry and academia
provide women engineers and professors with many additional opportunities.
In fact, I think academia offers even more than industry through creating
special programs or considerations in hiring and research funding. A female
engineer or professor is also more visible (say, easier to be noticed or
remembered) during daily working contacts. Nonetheless, female engineers and
professors often encounter more difficulties when being considered for
administrative positions.
Fiona: Do they tend to be better or worse than men with regard to certain
skills?
Dr. Chen: In academia, my observation is that female professors are more
aggressive (of course, not everyone) than their counterparts in industry. I
am not sure whether it means that academic life is harsher, or only the “
aggressive” women would choose academia. I don’t see any difference
between male or female engineers from technical perspectives, but apparently
female engineers take more responsibilities for their families than male
engineers. That may explain some of our observations.
Fiona: Your 35-page single-spaced CV told me you must be a genius as well as
an extremely busy person. How could you find time for serving as journal
editors, conference organizers, panel reviewers, and numerous service and
dissertation committees, while maintaining high productivity with several
ongoing federally funded projects (there are 14 manuscripts under review at
this moment!)? Do you have secrets in time management?
Dr. Chen: You have to prioritize them and attend to the most important tasks
first. Not everything is equally important and their value alters at
different phases of your career. I work hard, of course, but in academia
almost everybody (if not all) is working hard. If I have any secret, I think
that is probably motivating my team effectively: my students participate in
writing proposals, coordinating meetings with collaborators and funding
agencies, and helping with many administrative and logistic duties of mine.
Through learning from these extra activity, they become well prepared for
the “cruel” society they will be facing upon graduation.
Fiona: Considering the short duration you have worked as a college professor
, the number of students and postdocs you have trained is impressive. Do you
mentor them on an individual basis or rely mostly on lab culture and peer
supervision?
Dr. Chen: We have two types of meetings – weekly 1-1’s and small study-
group meetings. We have only one general group meeting per semester because
it is hard to find a meeting room for 40 people and such a meeting is often
inefficient. With a hierarchical personnel structure, senior students help
me mentor the juniors. I monitor students’ research progress though 1-1
meetings, which I try my best to protect even considering my busy travel
schedule, as well as weekly reports. I usually tell them what I want to see
rather than what they need to do. They figure out the details by themselves
or with other students. Luckily, our group is sufficiently large so that
they can always find an expert to answer their questions. I have never laid
off any students (so far), but our peer pressure is huge with so many
productive members. In short, we run as an efficient team, in which
individual genius is not critical.
Fiona: Now that all of you students are productive and competent, can you
tell which ones are more likely to succeed as scientists, which ones should
aim at industrial leadership? Has anyone disappointed you with his/her
decision?
Dr. Chen: First of all, not ALL of them are productive or competent. People
like to imagine that we have different requirements of personal
characteristics for scientists and industry leaders. Unfortunately, this
presumption does not hold. There are common personality traits shared by
both roles: persistence, diligence, teamworking … I am happy as long as my
students become successful, be it academia or industry.
Fiona: Hollywood likes to portrait us scientists as long gray haired nerds
who have little idea about how the society outside our labs functions. Tell
us about the online bookstore you cofounded as a college student. Are you
still participating in the management? Do you have plans for other types of
business in the future?
Dr. Chen: I quit from the online-store business around 2004 and am no longer
a part of the team. Since then, many of the people I worked with have
become important figures in the Chinese Internet industry. That was one of
my most valuable investments in terms of personal connections. In China,
there is a popular saying, “Personal connection is the first productive
force”. Although meant to be a joke, it does state a truth that your
reputations and personal connections are vital for your career, and I
carefully maintain them. In addition, if you have gone through the whole
process of building a startup, you would know whom you want to work with,
what you can and cannot do. I like trying new things, and I will experiment
with some kind of start-up in the future. In fact, I think we have already
come up with some good ideas, and we’ll see.
Fiona: Entrepreneurial mindset is currently a hot topic in the engineering
disciplines. For students who are still pursuing their degrees, do you think
it helps to bring up their awareness of industrial opportunities, risk
management, etc., or would you rather have them focus on basic engineering
skills, e.g., signal processing, without being overly distracted?
Dr. Chen: Although I started my own company when I was a M.S. student, I am
generally against the idea of sacrificing your study for commercial
opportunities. I still remember when I told the advisor of my M.S. thesis
how “successful” my start-up was, he said, “I agree with you that you
might have learned things that extend beyond the scope of school, but the
reason we still need education is that other things, some of which are
essential in the make of a scientist or a businessman, can ONLY be taught at
academia.” Those are the words that will be kept in my mind forever and
shared with my students.
Fiona: Would you also like to share the experience of organizing the concert
for two famous singers at Tsinghua?
Dr. Chen: Ahha! Jian Li and Jie Miao are very famous now, and I’m happy to
have witnessed their growth in our young age and early stage of their career
. I was the producer of that concert, and I still consider it as one of my
proudest accomplishments. You wouldn’t believe we only spent RMB12000
organizing the whole concert, and I still owe one of the two singers RMB2000
for the recording tapes we used.
Fiona: Did the concert bring back enough gross to cover the expenses?
Dr. Chen: No. If I remember correctly, the admission was free because ticket
pricing would have taken a long time to be approved. You can imagine how
hard it was to get a ticket. Many famous singers and musicians attended the
concert: “Lao Lang”, Gengxu Lu, Xiaosong Gao, Jie Li … After the concert,
we had an exclusive party for the rest of the night in a pub named BlueJay
in the university neighborhood. I met Jian and Jie again at the 60th
anniversary party of the department I graduated from, and we were glad to
see all of us doing well in our own careers.
Fiona: An experience like that would certainly be remembered. Could you have
become an artist yourself?
Dr. Chen: My mom has a B.S. degree in music, but I failed to inherit the
talents from her. I enjoy art and music, but I don’t want to pretend to be
an expert.
Fiona: Your research covers the areas of embedded systems, memory and
sensing, nano-devices, etc. Which topic do you think has the potential of
making the largest impact?
Dr. Chen: As computer engineers, my wife and I have started gaining
attentions for our research on emerging memory technologies. We recently
shifted to brain-inspired computing, which is believed to revolutionize the
computer industry by allowing computer to “think” like a human being. We
are still far from this ultimate goal, but we have already seen light above
the horizon. I’d like to use the following sentence to summarize our
research: “I imagine a world where the difference between man and machine
blurs, where the difference between humanity and technology fades, where the
soul and silicon chip unite.” (Raymond Kurzweil, “The Age of Intelligent
Machines”)
