My thoughts upon visiting the University of Science and Technology of China

Stefaan De Smedt, University of Science and Technology of China

I was honored to be invited by Professor Xu to come to the University of Science and Technology of China for a visit and to give a short course on drug delivery. This visit truly made apparent to me the rapid development of China and its universities and academic culture.

As was abundantly apparent during my visit, the University of Science and Technology of China is clearly an excellent university. The laboratories and experimental platforms here are quite comparable to my home institution, and set the stage for the very high-quality-impact research emerging from USTC. The students especially were quite bright and engaged in lectures and coursework. During my visit, I mainly learned about Professor Xu's team. The team is quite large and full of active, international faculty with diverse research interests. This multi-investigator, multi-disciplinary environment has led to some excellent research results. I think this dynamic team is an excellent representation of the high caliber of work emerging from the University of Science and Technology of China.

During my research talk and short course, I described the current state of the art and challenges of drug delivery to diseased tissue. The focus of drug development has shifted in recent years from small molecule drugs to biopharmaceuticals and cell therapy. In addition to summarizing the successes and failures experienced in drug delivery in the past decade, I also showed some of our latest findings: The combination of antibodies and nanomaterials can improve the efficacy of treatment of bacterial biofilms. After the lectures, I interacted quite extensively with the students and found that they not only had many similar research interests, but they impressed me with their active and insightful thinking.

During my one-week course I found that many young teachers and students here have a wealth of ideas and have a strong interest in the field of drug delivery. Outside of my teaching duties, I was able to have many casual and formal exchanges and conversations with other faculty to learn more deeply about the work they are doing. I can anticipate that there will be some outstanding work here in the future, and that opportunities for collaboration abound.

As a rapidly developing country, China’s emphasis on education and scientific research has really impressed me. They set up a special fund for recruitment of foreign talent, and they have a large number of exchange visits each year, creating excellent global, cross-cultural research conditions. Fostering an open, welcoming environment is definitely one of the important conditions for promoting a comfortable academic atmosphere.

I would like to thank the University of Science and Technology of China and Professor Xu for inviting me to experience what the USTC has to offer. This was truly a very unique and important opportunity. China has made remarkable achievements in many ways, something that I believe stems from the government’s heavy investment in education. I believe that it will continue to produce excellent scientific research results, at an increasing pace. I am looking forward to the next visit to China and further cooperation with the University of Science and Technology of China.