ences in language, culture, social and com-
munication skills, and become all the more
prominent as one’s career advances. Some get
through this bottleneck by truly exceptional
research accomplishments, others by con-
sciously training themselves throughout
graduate school and postdoc years. It cannot
be overemphasized how important commu-
nication skills are, both oral and written. This
of course is true for all scientists, but for
Chinese scientists it takes extraordinary effort
to train in these skills. From the perspective
of faculty search committees, an open-mind-
edness to including colleagues raised in dif-
ferent cultures could increase diversity and
exploit the talent pool from all over the
world, both essential to keeping U.S. scientif-
ic research at the forefront.
After securing a faculty position, the end-
less tasks a professor has to deal with—
teaching, grant writing, recruiting graduate
students and postdocs, then not only training
them in science but also sometimes being
their psychological counselor—are amplified
by whatever deficiencies have not been over-
come since moving across the Pacific. An
important new challenge at this stage is that
social interactions with peers and leaders in
the field become more important for name
recognition (an area in which Chinese people
in the United States are at an inherent disad-
vantage), successful grant and award appli-
cations, and promotion. There is more objec-
tivity in science than in some other profes-
sions, yet one cannot deny the advantagegained by being proactive about promoting
one’s own research and being in the right
social circle. These advantages are often less
accessible to Chinese-born scientists, again
because of their socialization skills, cultural
barriers and their upbringing (modesty is a
great virtue; pride is a vice).Despite these challenges, many Asian-
born scientists nevertheless achieve highly
desired success, contributing to landmark
scientific discoveries. Time will tell if they
will also play leadership roles in their insti-
tutions and professional societies. Asian-
born scientists at different levels also face the
challenge of how they can contribute to sci-
entific research and education in the country
where they themselves grew up and were
educated. Some choose to go back altogether
to lead research laboratories and institutions
there. Others spend considerable time super-
vising research groups in their home coun-
tries. Yet others actively participate in advis-
ing their home government on strategic
planning, resource allocation and research
management, including development of
peer-review systems. Finally, some choose to
focus on the young: they return to teach not
only cutting edge research but also critical
thinking and the social and communicationCHAPTER 5 • POSTDOC ISSUES 177THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR CELL BIOLOGY
Social interactions with peers
and leaders in the field become
more important for name
recognition (an area in which
Chinese people in the United
States are at an inherent
disadvantage), successful
grant and award applications,
and promotion.The limiting factors are
presentation skills and the
ability to engage in interesting
and effective scientific
exchanges with ... colleagues.