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A: FROM MENTOR BARB KONTOGIANNIS
IN CO
What a great question! I work in the Aerospace Industry and
the project I am on has a great deal of contact with other
countries and cultures. We currently have a launch vehicle
project in work with the Japanese. We would love to hire engineers
who also speak and read/write Japanese, but that is a rare
combination! We buy engines from Russia, and composite structures
from Switzerland and Spain. We have other foreign suppliers
as well.
When I was in school 15 years ago, I would never have imagined
we'd be working so closely with Russians on rocket engine
technology. The only students I knew studying Russian language
at the time were international relations and political science
majors. If only I had known that knowing Russian would be
valuable as an engineer too! Same with Japanese, French, German
and Spanish.
It's hard to say what other nations we interact with the most,
and it can change in just a few years. On my current project,
we interact quite a bit with Japan and Russia but, as I mentioned,
we have technical business with several other countries as
well.
As you study science, engineering and technology, I would
certainly encourage learning a foreign language too. It is
becoming a more valuable skill in the ever-shrinking world.
I've noticed that most people from other countries speak more
than one language, but most Americans only speak one. It would
be wonderful to see that changing. I realize it is hard to
choose which "one" would be most valuable though.
And don't just stop at languages. Understanding other cultures
is very important too, even if you don't speak the language.
**********
A: FROM MENTOR JOAN LUSK IN
RI
There is indeed a lot of contact! A large fraction of graduate
students in
science are foreign, with China the biggest source. India
and Korea send
many, as does Europe and Canada. One of my friends had a large
group of 10
students from 10 different countries at one point. Many of
these students
find jobs here after earning their PhDs, in industry and in
academia. You
simply can't avoid working with people of other nationalities,
even if you
wanted to.
If you look at the names and institutional affiliations of
co-authors of
scientific papers, you'll see a lot of international collaboration
as well
as authors whose names reveal international origin, however
far back in
their family history. We English-speakers are lucky that English
is the
lingua franca, but we still miss out on work published in
other languages.
It's worrisome that Americans seem to believe that hard work
is necessary
only for sports, while young people of other nations believe
that hard work
in academic subjects will bring success. If you read the essays
the
Chinese write for applications to grad school, they emphasize
studying
hard, overcoming obstacles, persistence. And many other countries
are
investing in universities and research, so that their citizens
will return
home. Meanwhile, the US government in its paranoia made it
more difficult
to get student visas; they seem to have loosened up a little
over that. I
see the current balance of scientific power as the mirror
image of the
situation 100-150 years ago, when Americans went to Germany
to become
scientists, returned and started the scientific establishment
here - with a
big boost from Hitler's persecutions and WWII to continue
the momentum.
**********
A: FROM MENTOR WANDA RITCHIE
IN MA
Corinne, I can share with you my
personal experiences in dealing with scientist and engineers
from other
nations. As a chemical engineer and business manager with
Eastman Kodak
Company, I have frequent interactions with technologists from
other nations.
These interactions are sometimes with scientists within our
own company -
dealing with product or process improvements, manufacturing
problems
(sometime equipment related, sometimes related to quality
of raw materials).
I also have frequent interactions with scientists and engineers
from
companies in similar businesses - many of whom supplied raw
materials.
Often we exchange technologies such as quality test methods,
analytical
equipment specifications, manufacturing process procedures,
etc.
My interactions were with scientists in France, England, Japan,
China,
Brazil, Mexico, Canada.
Professional societies often provide opportunities for scientist
from many
nations to assemble and share information. For example, in
my industry, the
Royal Photographic Society conducts symposia every few years
generally
somewhere in Europe.
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A: FROM MENTOR LESLIE WAITE
IN CA
Hey Corinne!
I don't know if I would call it international relations, but
I deal
with people from other nations in my work every day, and have
ever
since I began graduate school in science. These interactions
fall
into mainly two forms: co-workers from other nations, and
researchers
from other nations who are in my field of study.
Since the US is such a powerhouse in scientific research,
there is
much interest from people all over the world to come here
for
training. It is very prestigious to have US training, and
I have even
heard that in many European nations (most notably Germany)
you
shouldn't even bother applying for a position as a faculty
member at
the better Universities unless you have had some training
in the US.
A graduate student that I trained with from Korea went straight
from
getting his Ph.D. to being Assistant Dean of a Nursing College
in
Korea- a very prestigious position.
As a result of this desire to train in the US, every science
department has many international students, post-docs and
faculty
members. I work on a daily basis with people from Scotland,
China,
France, Morocco, Japan, Austria, India, South Africa, Malaysia,
Brazil, Korea, Russia, Poland, etc. This is not unusual! I
would say
that the plurality (vocabulary word! look it up!) of International
folks that I work with are from China, the fewest number come
from
African Nations, and that has been true no matter where I
worked.
Because of this great international diversity in science,
it is also
very common to interact with people outside of your University
who
are working on similar science projects from all over the
globe.
Sometimes you just want to get them to send you a paper that
they
have written, but sometimes you set up collaborations on scientific
projects. Most of these collaborations are still within the
US, but
it is not uncommon for collaborations to be set up with people
in
Europe or Japan.
In my interactions with International researchers, I have
found out a
lot about other cultures and lifestyles, and how other nations
"do"
science. Sometimes I find that I am in the minority as an
American in
a lab, and this has given me insight into what it means to
be a
"minority", which has been very interesting. So
it is not only
informative and interesting scientifically, but also personally!
**********
A: FROM MENTOR AIMEE WILLOZ
IN MN
Great question, Corinne! My experience has been that there's
a lot of
interaction with people in other countries. For example, I
work for
Seagate Technology and we have manufacturing facilities in
a number of
countries, primarily in Asia. We have manufacturing facilities
for disk
drives and components in Singapore, China, Thailand, Malaysia,
and Northern
Ireland. Some of the engineers at Seagate (depending on what
they work on)
have conference calls with the production facilities anywhere
from once a
week to once a day. We also have suppliers all over the world
that we deal
with regularly (again, depending on one's job responsibilities).
Personally, I don't interact with our other facilities very
often in my
current job, but in my previous job I talked to them multiple
times per
week. As far as which nation we interact with the most, that
depends very
much on your job. At Seagate, people working on drive manufacturing
interact with Singapore the most, because that's where our
drives are
manufactured. People working on head design and manufacturing
interact
most with Northern Ireland, Malaysia, and Thailand, because
those
facilities perform the different parts of the head manufacturing
process.
********************
A: FROM MENTOR BRENDA WOLFE
IN CO
It really is a global market place. I believe that most large
companies have an international component to it. As an Applications
Engineer, I support our slaes and marketing group for North
and South America. The countries I deal the most with are
Canada, Mexico, Chile and Peru.
The company I work for in Colorado is actually owned by a
company in Finland. I have a lot of contact with people in
Finland and Sweden as well.
We are actually very spoiled because most countries have
had to learn some English - but we don't have to know their
languages. International technology can be shared despite
language barriers and e-mail has been wonderful to communicate
with the part of the world that is sleeping while we are working.
**********
A: FROM MENTOR MAYLING WONG
IN IL
Hi Corinne, I am an engineer working at the Fermi National
Accelerator
Laboratory. Our work here centers on high-energy physics,
which is the
study of matter at the fundamental level. The physicists expand
their
knowledge in particle physcis, asking questions like "What
is the
universe made of?" "What are the characteristics
of particles such as
quarks, leptons, and bosons?" "Why is there more
matter in the universe
than antimatter?"
This area of study is so broad that people from all over the
world
collaborate on various projects. In high energy physics, the
largest
majority of the physicists come from the United States and
the European
Union, especially Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. There are
also a
large number of physicists from Japan and China involved deeply
in high
energy physics. In my own experience, I worked on a 2-year
long project
which included a physicist from Italy. We teleconferenced
with him on
an almost daily basis. It was a priviledge working so closely
with him,
as we learned a lot about the Italian culture as well making
progress on
the project. Here at the lab, there are so many people from
different
countries that one is not surprised to hear more than one
language
spoken upon entering the elevator in the office building.
Projects are
built all over the world, so international collaboration on
a project is
a must.
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