On 22^nd May, the CIOMP Division of International Cooperation and the CIOMP OSA/SPIE Student Chapters jointly held the second meeting of “Rose in Science” activity. The meeting was hosted at CIOMP and was attended from CIOMP faculty, students and all members of the CIOMP OSA/SPIE Student Chapter. The meeting was a continuanceof series activities celebrating the International Year of Light (2015) and contributing to “WOMEN IN OPTICS" theme form SPIE.

This time, the honored speaker was Prof. Alice Zhang (Haixia Zhang), an outstandingfemale professor in Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMs) from Peking University, founder of International Contest of Applications in Network of Things (ICAN), chairwoman for international IEEE MEMs conference in 2013. She was invited to deliver an inspiring speech entitled Be a Confident, Happy and Creative girl inPhD.

In her speech, Prof. Zhang introduced her own confident, happy and creative life as one of massive female PhDs with three parts: academic growth, life refinement and creative practice. Through her own experience, she shared her concept and efforts to be “a girl in PhD should be confident, be happy and be creative” with the audience.

Be confident. Nowadays, female PhDs are usually labeled with some misunderstanding characters such as difficult to get married, over sensible and so on. Prof. Zhang emphasized that female PhDs with advanced education are surely distinguished from common females in ability and temperament. She even humorously encouraged single males on site to marry a girl in PhD if he pursued a harmonious family, since female PhDs could be a preeminent researcher, an excellent family manager and a responsible mother good at education.

Be happy. The key point to earn a happy life is to spend time and energy on both work and family. We should promote our work and research with passion and energy. Meanwhile, keeping enthusiasm for taking care of the family should be given the equal consideration. The balancing of career and family needs reasonable time management, which is an effective path leading to a happy life. Prof. Zhang also pointed out that to keep ourselves happy, we should not spend too much time on making decisions and considering possible consequences. “If you wish to do something, go ahead and just do it!” said Prof. Zhang with a big smile.

Be creative. For a researcher, the most important thing is to be creative. But creative minds should be based on solid basic knowledge accumulation. This process could be as boring as “moving bricks” on construction sites. But during this process of accumulation, we should broaden our eyes, seek for new directions and solve problems with whole heart. Only with persistent attempts during “moving bricks”, could we grow up as creative scientific researchers form green heads at the very beginning.

She also shared her own secrets to stay positive and energetic in both work and family life. After her speech, Prof. Zhang had a lively and engaging interaction with the audience. Faculties and students participated the interaction actively and enthusiastically, putting forward questions like “How to insist on ‘moving bricks’ without giving up halfway?”, “How to educate children successfully with the role of a scientific researcher as well as a mother?”, “How to cultivate the ability to stay focus on work or family in this era of information?” and so on. She answered the questions in details with patience and humor, providing inspirations for the audience.

At last, the second Rose in Science meeting ended successfully in a warm and pleasant atmosphere.

A group photo of Prof.Haixia Zhang and CIOMP staff and students

Prof.Haixia Zhang made a presentation