Nobel Prize Winner

"One Japanese and two American scientists have won this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry for taking the ability of some jellyfish to glow and transforming it into a ubiquitous tool of molecular biology for watching the dance of living cells and the proteins within them.

The fluorescent proteins are now routinely used for observing the growth and fate of specific cells like nerve cells damaged during Alzheimer’s disease.

The winners are Osamu Shimomura, 80, an emeritus professor at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., and Boston University Medical School; Martin Chalfie, 61, a professor of biological sciences at Columbia University; and Roger Y. Tsien, 56, a professor of pharmacology at the University of California, San Diego.

Each will receive a third of the 10 million krona prize (about $1.4 million) awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences."

The above few paragraphs were extracted from New York Times on Oct 8, 2008. Certainly, from the Chinese media, what they really focus is Mr. Roger Tsien. He is a nephew of a Chinese Scientist who has the nickname of 'Father of missile' for the PRC. So, in Chinese media, this relationship was being highlighted as well.

Well, for me I only think of one thing. He is going to be pursued after in future when one of the top local universities need to find a president. I don't know why they have to do that, cos begin a Nobel Prize winner doesn't mean he is gonna be a great university president. Cos, the skill set is totally different. You could be a genius in the lab or doing research, but what an university president needs to be is someone who is a great communicator, good PR person that can talk to riches and government to get fundings, or manage the university politics. His ethnicity, nationality are not that important indeed. Certainly, that's not most local university's board committee members think. Just share my thought!