诺奖学者聚德霍夫：自由探索浪费了我很多时间，但给了我最好的教育

 
 
演讲摘要
 
 

在第四届中国光谷科学·教育·创新论坛上，诺贝尔生理学或医学奖得主、美国国家科学院院士托马斯·聚德霍夫教授以线上形式参与论坛。他为在场的光谷科教界人士和光谷康桥师生讲述了自己成为一名科学家的前期探索经历，并提出培养创新能力需要三种条件：充满智慧和活力的环境、建设性批判性的反馈以及独立自主的精神。

 

 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
创新不仅需要新技术，更需要新想法
 
 

大家好，我是托马斯·聚德霍夫（Thomas Südhof），我很高兴和大家谈谈科技创新。在开始之前，我对中国光谷科学·教育·创新论坛的召开表示衷心的祝贺和良好的祝愿！同时，我也祝愿光谷康桥高级中学在培养下一代科学家方面取得持续的成就。

Hello. My name is Thomas Südhof, and I'm delighted to talk to you about science and technology innovation. Before I start, I would like to convey my best wishes and congratulations for the China Optics Valley Science Innovation Education Summit. Moreover, I would like to extend my best wishes for continued success in educating the next generation of scientists to the Optics Valley Cambridge Senior High School.

 

这次演讲是对我作为一名医学科学家和教育家的经历的概括。为什么科技创新很重要？所以当你回顾近十年左右的时候，你会惊讶地发现有许多变革性的新技术出现了。你们耳熟能详的人工智能，现在几乎在所有国家到处都是。它正在成为分析数据的一种普遍方法，其原因显然是创新、计算和软件。除此之外，现在我们比以前拥有更大的数据集，这正是人工智能所擅长的。

This talk is intended as a general account of my experience as a medical scientist and educator. Why is science and technology innovation important? When you look back at the recent decade or so, it is amazing how many revolutionary new technologies have emerged. You are all familiar with artificial intelligence, which is now present in almost every kind of activity in all countries. It is becoming an omnipresent approach to analyzing data, and the reason for that is obviously innovation in computations and software, but also the fact that we now have larger data sets than before, which is exactly what artificial intelligence is good at.

 

 

然后是转录组学，这是专门为生物医学研究，能够实际测量基因表达的能力。冷冻电镜是另一种非常生物学的方法，它使我们能够以前所未有的、颠覆性的分辨率观察分子。化学和光遗传学使我们能够操控体内的细胞，尤其是大脑中的细胞。还有传感器成像，这是另一种成像技术。最后是合成RNA修饰，这使得在创纪录的时间内产生针对新冠病毒的疫苗成为可能。你们可能都知道疫苗改变了这种疾病的影响，这是未来许多创新的典范。
Then there is transcriptomics, which is specific to biomedical research, the ability to actually measure gene expression. There's cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), another very biological approach, which enables us to see molecules at an unprecedented,revolutionary resolution. There's chemo-and optogenetics, which enable us to manipulate cells in the body, especially in the brain. There's sensor imaging, another approach. And finally, there are synthetic RNA modifications which made it possible to generate vaccines against COVID-19 in record time. As you probably all know, these vaccines have changed the course of that disease and serve as a paradigm for many innovations to come.

 

在列举了所有这些创新之后，我想指出，与已经出现的技术和新概念典范相对的是，真正创新的新概念很少。因此，在某种程度上，技术上的巨大进步并没有使我们在实际了解世界、了解疾病和治疗疾病方面取得相当的进步。这就提出了一个问题，这将是一个没有内容的技术时代吗？创新需要的不仅仅是新技术，还需要新应用、新想法，产生一些新的理解内容。

Having said this, however, after listing all these innovations, I want to point out that few truly innovative new concepts, as opposed to technologies and new conceptual paradigms, have emerged. So, this vast technological advance has not yet yielded a comparable advance in our actual understanding of the world, understanding of diseases, and treatment of diseases.This raises the question: will this be an age of technologies without content? Innovation is more than just new technologies, although new technologies are essential. However, innovation requires more than new technologies because new applications and new ideas are not enough. You need to actually generate some novel understanding content.

 

 
 
成为科学家的经历
 
 

接下来我想告诉你们我个人是如何成为一名科学家的。这是我个人的旅程，我想以我个人的角度谈谈成功的要素。我出生在德国。我学的是医学。当我学医学的时候，我发现到目前为止，医生们并不真正了解大多数疾病。所以我想成为一名科学家，帮助人们了解疾病。当我在马克斯普朗克研究所做医学研究时，我开始写一篇博士论文。

I would now like to tell you a little bit about how I personally developed as a scientist. It's a personal journey, and I would like to share, with some remarks on what I personally think constitutes success.I'm German. I was born and grew up in Germany. I studied medicine. I wanted to become a doctor, but when I was studying medicine, I decided that doctors, then as now, didn't actually understand most diseases. So, I wanted to become a scientist to help people understand diseases.So, in addition to my medical studies, I started a doctoral thesis at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen.

 

 

当时，我被任命为助理科学家。我被分配到一个比我现在的办公室还要大的办公室，就是我现在学术职位的办公室。我得到了一个完整的实验室，一个属于我自己的实验室，只有我自己一个人。我可以做任何我想做的事，不需要任何训练，只是去探索，去充实。结果我发表了作为科学家的第一篇论文。我以单一作者的身份发表了这篇论文。

When I started this, I was appointed as an assistant scientist. I was assigned an office in this large institute that was larger than my current office. I was given a whole laboratory for myself, and I was completely left alone to do whatever I wanted without any training, just to explore and conduct research.As a result, I published the first paper I ever wrote as a scientist. I just worked on what I had been studying and published it as a single-author paper. 

 

 

对于一个学生来说，这不是一件好事，它只反映了我最初作为助理科学家是完全自由的。我毫无头绪且浪费了太多时间。我认为我发表的第一篇论文可能也是在浪费时间。但它教会了我很多东西。我可以探索任何我想要的东西。我可以深入挖掘，也可以不深入挖掘，这取决于我读了什么，取决于我在与他人讨论中发现了什么，这真是令人振奋。

For a student, publishing a paper like this is not necessarily a good thing, as it reflects that the freedom I had as an assistant scientist was absolute. I was clueless and wasted a lot of time. I think that first paper I published was probably not very significant, but it taught me many things. I learned a lot.I could explore whatever I wanted, and I could dig as deep or as shallow as I chose, depending on what I read and what I discovered in discussions with others. It was truly exhilarating.

 

 

我在马克斯普朗克研究所完成了博士研究和论文后，我以博士后科学家的身份来到了美国，并加入了德克萨斯州达拉斯的布朗和戈尔茨坦实验室。德克萨斯州的达拉斯与德国非常不同。这是一个巨大的方形城市，四周很空旷，它孕育了伟大的科学，因为当时它是美国领先的研究中心之一。这里也是一个从事科学研究的好地方，因为这里几乎没有别的事情可做。

After I finished my training as a doctor and completed my thesis work at the Max Planck Institute, I moved to the United States as a postdoctoral scientist and joined the Brown and Goldstein lab in Dallas, Texas. Dallas, Texas, is very different from Germany. It is a sprawling city surrounded by empty space, and it fosters great science because it was one of the leading research centers in the United States at the time. It is also an excellent place to do science because there's not much else to do. 

 

天气不是特别热就是特别冷。在布朗和戈尔茨坦的实验室里，我全身心地投入到科学研究中，学会了如何严谨地对待科学，只研究生物学上重要的问题，真正集中精力，不浪费时间。通过这样训练，以及作为布朗和戈尔茨坦实验室博士后科学家工作的结果，我得到了德克萨斯大学西南分校的教授职位。

The weather is either incredibly hot or cold.In the Brown and Goldstein lab, I devoted myself completely to science and learned how to be rigorous in my research, focusing on biologically important questions and not wasting time. As a result of this training and my work as a postdoctoral scientist in the Brown and Goldstein lab, I was offered a position as a professor at the University of Texas Southwestern, where I started my own lab in 1986. 

 

1986年，我在那里建立了自己的实验室。在我的实验室里，我试图建立一种合作的文化。我的实验室里有各种各样的实验室成员、博士后、技术人员、学生。当时我们在实验室里研究的问题是神经元如何释放神经递质，这是一个控制大脑中所有信息处理的中心过程。

In my lab, I tried to establish a culture of collaboration and working together. The question we were addressing in my lab at that time was how neurons release neurotransmitters, a central process that governs all information processing in the brain. Let me briefly explain what that question entails.

 

20世纪90年代末聚德霍夫实验室成员合照

 

作为一名科学家，我从我的个人经历中学到了什么？这就涉及到一个问题，什么是科学上的成功？科学家的目标是什么？与其他职业的目标不同，与个人生活的目标也不同。人们经常误解科学家，他们发表论文的学术期刊，比如《自然》、《细胞》、《科学》或者引用次数，或者他们通过奖金获得的收入，人们经常误以为这些指标是体现学术影响力重要因素。但影响力不是论文或金钱。在我看来，科学家真正的影响力是他或她的发现是否引领了一种被其他人广泛追随的新范式。

As a scientist, what have I learned from my personal journey? There are a couple of things I'd like to mention, which relates to the question, what is success in science?What is our goal as scientists, as opposed to other professions or personal life goals? People often misunderstand what it means to be a successful scientist. They may focus on the academic journals where papers are published, such as Nature, Cell, or Science, or the number of citations a paper receives, which is how often it is mentioned by others. They may also consider the money a professor brings in for their institution or earns through prizes.These metrics, often key performance indicators (KPIs), are frequently confused with real impact. But impact is not about papers or money. As scientists, what we truly want is impact. In my view, what's important is whether a discovery has led to a new paradigm that has been extensively followed up by others.

 

 
 
如何培养学生的创新能力？
 
 

最后，我想告诉谈一谈我是如何帮助我的学生开发他们的潜力的。我已经训练了很多人，超过100人，他们现在是世界各地机构的教授或公司的顶尖科学家。帮助我的学生开发他们的潜力，也使我个人能够发挥我的潜力，这是互利的。看到我试图指导的人能够茁壮成长，并最终对其他人也有意义，我感到很满意。

After sharing my personal journey, I'd like to discuss how I have attempted to help my trainees develop their potential. I've trained over a hundred individuals who are now professors at institutions worldwide or leading scientists at companies. Helping my trainees to develop their potential has also allowed me to fulfill my own potential. I personally benefit in many ways, finding it deeply satisfying to witness the growth of those I've tried to mentor and to see their eventual impact on others. 

 

在我看来，促进和发展一个人的创新才能由以下几个组成部分。它需要一个充满智慧和活力的环境，我没法光靠自己一个人为别人创造这样的环境，但我可以帮助别人创造。它需要能够接触到技术，新技术，以及所有技术。它需要建设性但批判性的反馈，不是每件事都是伟大、美丽和奇妙的。它需要自主和独立。

Promoting and developing a person's talent for innovation, in my view, involves several components: 

  • An intellectually vibrant environment is necessary. I can't create such an environment by myself for another person, but I can assist in creating it.

  • Access to technology, both new and existing, is essential.

  • Constructive but critical feedback is vital. Not all ideas are equally good, and it's important to recognize this.

  • Autonomy and independence are required for true innovation.

 

让我简单阐述一下每一点。一个充满智慧活力的环境意味着周围有人可以交谈。也就是说，从本质上讲，充满智慧的环境是一个你可以与其他人互动的环境，不仅是虚拟的，而且是面对面的、随意的，真正了解其他人如何看待科学问题。在一个完全阶层化的环境中，智慧的活力是无法实现的。它必须发生在人们可以自由交谈的时候。

Let me briefly elaborate on each point: An intellectually vibrant environment involves having people around to discuss ideas with, not just virtually but in person, ideally in a casual setting. This allows for the exchange of ideas and insights into how others view scientific problems. Such an environment cannot be achieved in a strictly hierarchical setting; it must allow for open and free conversation.

 

能够获取技术是一个显而易见的原因。为了开发你的才能，你需要有能力学习新事物、新方法，并且理解它们，应用它们。这是成功的关键因素。建设性批判性的反馈超越了我所描述的充满智力活力的环境，第一种是给别人积极的反馈，但也有消极的反馈。作为一名科学家，我从那些告诉我工作是错的人身上学到的东西比告诉我是对的要多。当我犯错时，我会向别人学习，我认为这是我能得到的最重要的反馈。因此，建设性和批判性的反馈是必不可少的。

Access to technology, including the latest advancements, is an obvious necessity. To develop one's talent, one must be able to learn and apply new methods and approaches.Constructive but critical feedback is essential. As a scientist, I have learned more from those who pointed out the flaws in my work rather than those who confirmed my beliefs. While I may think I'm right, I am often wrong, and this feedback is invaluable.

 

最后，就是自主和独立。这指的是培养年轻科学家和对科学感兴趣的人独立探索的能力。不要总是照本办事，而是要有能力决定自己下一步做什么。这就是为什么当我开始做助理科学家时，虽然我浪费了很多时间，但我认为它给了我所希望的最好的教育，因为我必须自己思考和探索。我有能力根据我当时的评估去做所有事情。显然，这会导致资源的浪费。但在科学领域，人们必须尝试。并不是所有的道路都行得通。事实上，很多方法都行不通，但这是科学的一部分。因为我们在发现新事物，我们不是在做我们可以预测的事情。

Finally, autonomy and independence are key. Young scientists and those interested in science should be encouraged to explore, even if some attempts turn out to be unproductive. They should not always be directed but should be given the freedom to decide on their next steps and to experiment.This was the case for me when I started as an assistant scientist. Despite the time I wasted, I believe it provided me with the best education possible, as it required me to think and explore independently. I was able to act based on my own assessments at the time, which, while it could lead to resource wastage, is a necessary part of scientific exploration. Not all experiments will be successful, and many will fail. This is inherent in science because we are exploring the unknown, not undertaking predictable tasks.

 

谢谢大家的聆听。我希望这对你们有所帮助。

Thank you for listening, and I hope you have found this informative. 

 

 
 
 

光谷康桥高级中学2024学年招生已经开始，中招代码：191。欢迎有意向报考的同学点击文末阅读原文进行报名。

 

 

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