2022年4月4日,《中国日报》第4版关注中科院合肥物质科学研究院强磁场科学中心副主任、研究员张欣的故事。
Champagne salute to students’ graduation and teacher’s spirit
香槟空瓶排排放 桃李芬芳蕴师情
By Zhu Luxin Rosy Lu
记者 朱立新 陆冰洁
No haste, no waste in this scientist’s laboratory with infinite possibilities.
这个科学家的实验室有着无限可能,却没有什么可以一蹴而就。
As graduation time approaches, Zhang Xin rearranges her shelves to make room for more empty Champagne bottles. “To me, each empty bottle is full of memories,” says Zhang, adding that 10 such bottles adorn the shelves in her office.
毕业季又要来临,张欣将她的柜子又整理了一番。很快,这里又会多出几个空空的香槟酒瓶。“对我来说,这些空瓶子装满了回忆,”张欣说,在她办公室的柜子里已经有了10个这样的空瓶子。
A leading interdisciplinary researcher in China, Zhang is also an academic supervisor to master’s and doctorate students. She is the deputy director and principal investigator of the High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
张欣是中科院合肥物质科学研究院强磁场科学中心的副主任和研究员。作为中国交叉学科研究的优秀代表,张欣也是硕士生和博士生的学术导师。
“After master’s and doctorate students finish their dissertation and pass the defense, we open a bottle of Champagne for each of them to celebrate,” says Zhang.
“每当硕士生和博士生完成他们的论文并通过答辩,我们都会给他们每个人开一瓶香槟来庆祝,”张欣说。
“After we drink from it, they sign their name on the bottle and put the date they graduated in to mark the wonderful time they have spent in our lab,” says Zhang, admiring a bottle left by her first PhD student in 2016.
“喝完香槟后,他们在酒瓶上签下自己的名字和毕业的日期,以此纪念他们在实验室度过的精彩时光,”张欣一边说着,一边拿起她的第一个博士生在2016年留下的瓶子。
Zhang, who was born in 1979, studied medical science at the Beijing Medical University, which later became part of Peking University in 2000, and went to study at the Indiana University in the United States in 2001.
出生于1979年的张欣曾在北京医科大学(2000年成为北京大学医学部)学习医学,2001年前往美国印第安纳大学深造。
She has been focusing on research involving magnetic fields and how to use them to improve human health.
她所从事的研究是将磁场应用到人类健康领域。
After completing her PhD, she did post-doctoral work at the Harvard Medical School until 2012. Since then she has been working at the CAS institute based in Hefei, capital of East China’s Anhui province.
获得博士学位后,她在哈佛大学医学院从事博士后的工作,直至2012年。此后,她一直在位于中国东部安徽省的中科院合肥物质科学研究院工作。
The institute has state-of-the-art research facilities, and using these Zhang’s team has achieved many breakthroughs. For example, the team concluded that healthy mice are safe in environments having magnetic fields of up to 30 tesla-a unit to measure magnetic flux density. The earlier known safe upper limit was 16 tesla.
凭借研究院最先进的研究设施,张欣团队取得了许多重大突破。例如,她的团队利用健康的小白鼠首次检测了30特斯拉级强磁场的生物安全性。在此之前,国际上最高测到了16特斯拉。
The results proved very important in the development of ultra-high field magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, equipment, which is widely used in hospitals.
团队的这些成果对超高场磁共振成像设备的研发非常重要。磁共振成像设备在医院有着广泛的应用。
Diagnosing different diseases using MRI requires various magnetic flux densities, but scientists need to first verify the safe upper limit by exposing animals to different magnetic fields in experiments, she says.
张欣说,使用磁共振成像设备诊断不同的疾病需要不同的磁通量密度,科学家们需要将实验动物放置在不同强度的磁场中,从而找到安全上限。
Zhang’s team also observed for the first time that the orientation and morphology of mitotic spindles-a structure that separates chromosomes during mitosis (cell division)-can be changed using a ultra-high magnetic field. This finding is also helping in cancer research.
张欣团队还首次发现了强稳态磁场能够显著改变人类细胞有丝分裂纺锤体的排布方向及形态。这一成果对于肿瘤的研究有着积极意义。
Yu Biao, one of Zhang’s PhD students, says the supervisor’s office seemingly has a magical power to solve problems and calm nerves. Yang Xingxing, another PhD student, says Zhang has always been the first person to open the door of the laboratory in the morning.
张欣指导的博士生郁彪说,“张老师的办公室对我有一种魔力,很多不理解,困惑或者郁闷的事情,来到她办公室后,全部迎刃而解”。而另一位博士生杨星星则说,张老师永远是给实验室开门的那个人。
Calligraphy art work done by her father-in-law adorns the walls in Zhang’s office. One of them reads: “What we know is limited, while what we don’t know is infinite.” Another piece says: “Haste makes waste.”
张欣的办公室里挂着几幅书法作品,是她的公公写的。一副写道,“我们知道的东西是有限的,我们不知道的东西是无限的”。另一副则写着“欲速则不达”。
Zhang strives to avoid any haste, while maximizing the time she can spend at work.
“欲速则不达”的情况是张欣极力避免的,于是她就只能将自己可以投入在工作上的时间最大化。
Zhang notes that there are fewer women than men in research institutes. “For example, about 20 percent of scientists at the associate professor level in our institute are women,” the professor says. “At my level, it’s less than 10 percent.”
张欣注意到一个现象,在研究机构中,女性的数量往往少于男性。“例如,在我们研究院,在达到副教授这个级别的科学家中,女性只有20%左右,而到我这个级别(教授),女性只有不到10%。”
She hopes more women will break the mold and do what they like in life, rather than playing traditional roles that were expected of them in the past. She regrets that the society often takes it for granted that women should spend more time caring for their families.
她希望更多女性可以打破束缚,去做她们自己喜欢做的事,而不是像过去一样,扮演着人们期望她们扮演的传统角色。令她感到遗憾的是,社会常常理所当然地认为,女性就应该花更多时间照料家庭。
One of Zhang’s students mentioned in the acknowledgments section of her dissertation that Zhang was a role model for her, balancing her career and family life well.
张欣的一位学生在其毕业论文的致谢部分提到,张老师是她的榜样,因为她总是能把事业和家庭平衡得很好。
“I try to take all the help I can get,” Zhang says, noting that she gets a lot of help from her parents-in-law.
“我会争取一切可以争取到的帮助,”张欣说,自己的公公婆婆就给了她很多的帮助。
Her husband, himself a scientist, too, spends as much time as possible with their children, Zhang says. On second thoughts, she says that the cooperation she receives from her husband should not be called “help”. It is just what being a father entails. And she wants more fathers to do their bit.
她的丈夫也是一名科学家,他会尽可能地多花时间陪伴孩子。她先是将丈夫的配合称为“帮助”,稍作停顿后她又说,这并不是“帮助”。归根结底,这只是在履行一个父亲应尽的义务。她也希望更多的父亲能够履行他们的义务。
(实习生陈卉蕾对本文翻译亦有贡献)
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原文链接:https://epaper.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202204/04/WS624a4444a3109375516eb122.html
视频链接:https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202203/18/WS62345e82a310fd2b29e51de0.html