China visit

People people everywhere, not anyone to ask (directions)!

I visited the cities of Shanghai, Taicang and Suzhou in China between 17 and 28th September, 2013. I must say that I was I very impressed by the development and modernization efforts of China, at least in these cities.

Shanghai is a bustling metropolis with high-rise buildings, high-speed railway lines, efficient multi-layered motorways, bus routes reaching almost every corner, huge shopping malls and easy-to-access almost 24x7 convenience stores.

Most of the high-rises belong to corporates and are along the river-front or the "bund area", which also includes the famous Shanghai tower, while the remaining parts of Shanghai city are filled with residential high-rises, which render a "concrete look" (pun intended) to the city. The Maglev high-speed train, which runs on the German 'magnetic levitation' technology, connects the Shanghai Pudong and Hongqiao airports to the outskirts of Shanghai city, covering a distance of 35 kms in approximately 8 minutes (max speed of 430kmph). The metro train system has several lines (numbered 1 to 10) covering most parts of Shanghai city. There are other long-distance high-speed "bullet" trains connecting Shanghai to cities like Beijing and Nanjing.

While I was impressed with the modernization efforts in Shanghai, I was also saddened by the 'dark pollution clouds' always hovering over the head. The sun was seldom visible, which rendered a very gloomy look to the city. I guess this has come at the cost of rapid industrialization in and around Shanghai, and might take years (or probably decades) to clear up despite the considerable greenery drive by the government. Further, I also felt that traveling around China without knowledge of the Chinese language is quite difficult, unlike in Japan where I managed to extensively travel without being able to speak any Japanese. This is probably because of the more people-friendly attitude at train and bus stations, shops, roads, etc. in Japan compared to in China, where people seemed less helpful or considerate towards foreigners. So I guess I should pick up some mandarin before I visit mainland China the next time.

In contrast, Taicang (Jiangsu province), about an hour bus drive from Shanghai, is very clean, much less polluted and a laid-back town. It has a city centre which seemed recently built with ordered roads, bus stops, hotels and shopping malls. Taicang as such is very old and carries a lot of history, just like any other city in China. Taicang literally means the "great barn" and has a natural sea port making it one of the oldest ports in the world. It is also the place from where Admiral Zheng He (Cheng Ho), one of the first explorers in the world, set off on his voyages between 1405 and 1435 AD. Zheng He established close relations between China and several city-states of the Malay peninsula. According to a legend, the emperor of China sent a princess Hang Li Po to the sultan of Malacca as a token of appreciation for his tribute. The nobles and servants who accompanied the princess settled in Bukit Cina and eventually grew into a class of Malay-born Chinese known as the peranakans. Later many immigrants from China migrated to Malaysia and Indonesia in search of work and prosperity, embraced the local culture yet still retaining their ancestory, thereby adding to the class of peranakans.

Suzhou (Soochow) is about 2 hours drive from Shanghai. Its a major city in the Jiangsu province, and has 2500 years of rich history. Due to its canals, stone bridges and gardens, Suzhou is usually referred to as the 'Venice of the East'. The famous Liu Yuan (Lingering Garden) is a classical chinese garden and is a UNESCO world heritage site. The garden was commissioned by Xu Taishi in the 16th century and built by stonemason Zhou Shicheng. The ownership later passed on to Liu Su and in the 18th century became open to the public for visits.

Academic meetings: I covered two conferences and one institute visit during my stay in China. In Shanghai, I gave a talk at Jing-Dong 'Jackie' Han's group at the Max Planck Germany - Chinese Academy of Sciences Partner Institute for Computational Biology (MPG-CAS PICB). PICB is housed within the premises of the Shanghai Institute of Biological Sciences (SIBS) campus and Jackie Han is one of the resident directors of the institute, together with visiting directors from Germany including Martin Vingron and other resident directors including Phillip Khaitovich. PICB is a very innotative initiative and is expected to see tremendous expansion over the next few years. Among the new groups is of Andrew Teschendorff who is in the process of moving from UCL London to set up his group at PICB.

At Taicang, I attended the 12th International Conference on Bioinformatics (InCoB), held at the Jin Jiang International Hotel. Although I felt that the quality of the conference had significantly dropped from previous years, there were some very interesting keynotes and presentations from which I gathered new ideas and directions for research and also met several enthusiastic scientists with whom it is worth keeping in touch. I was fortunate to meet Pramod Tandon, who is a very renowed scientist in India and a Padma Shri awardee (2009). Among others, I met Paul Horton (Tokyo; whom I have met several times earlier -- GIW-2009 in Yokohama, InCoB-2011 in Malaysia and the Winter School in Brisbane in July 2013), who has now become a good friend of mine, and also Luonan Chen (SIBS Shanghai), Keith Dunker (IUPUI USA; whom I had met before at ISB-2011 in India), Tan Tin Wee (NUS), Kwoh Chee Keong (NTU) and Ashwini Patil (Tokyo; whom I had met before at InCoB-2011 in Malaysia).

The main purpose of my visit to China was to attend the Cold Spring Harbour Frontiers in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology conference at the Suzhou Industrial Park (about 23 kms from the Suzhou city centre), and I am glad to say that the conference turned out to be excellent and entirely fulfilled the purpose of my visit. It was a five-day conference covering 10-15 talks from 9 AM to 9:30 PM each day. It was the most intensive conference I had ever attended and gave me ample opportunities to learn new concepts, frame novel directions for future research, interact with pioneers in the field and have a lot of fun.

Among the scientists I met and discussed with were Leroy Hood (ISB USA), Joel Sussman (Weizmann Israel), Marc Vidal (Harvard), Kazuyuki Aihara (Tokyo), Keith Dunker (IUPUI), Shirley Liu (Harvard), Satoru Miyano (Tokyo), Sarah Teichmann (Cambridge), Dong Xu (Missouri) and Zhongming Zhao (Vanderbilt). Among the other attendees were Andrew Teschendorff (whom I got to know at PICB Shanghai), Balaji Santhanam (Cambridge), Kun Huang (Ohio-State; a colleague of Prof Srini Parthasarathy, with whom I had previously collaborated for a project), Daisuke Kihara (Purdue; who had been the external reviewer for my PhD thesis!), Peh Yean Cheh (SGH, Singapore) and Phoebe Chen (La Trobe; whom I had met before at APBC 2012 in Melbourne).

I was very happy to meet Daisuke Kihara and he was very delighted to hear that it was me whose thesis he had evaluated last year. I invited him over to my lab the next time he visits Australia. Kun Huang invited me over to the Ohio-State, while Andrew is hoping that I will move to Shanghai (to his group) in the future! ;-) Peh Yean Cheh invited me over to her lab at SGH in Singapore. I was happy to discuss extensively with Balaji, Himanshu (TIFR) and Ashwini as well, while Pheobe dreaded my questions and requested me not to ask any during her talk :-))

Cold Spring Harbour has set up a fantastic facility called the Dushu Lake Conference Center at the Suzhou Industrial Park for organizing conferences and meetings year-long in the Asia region spearheaded by none other than James Dewey Watson. The facility houses a world-class hotel for conference attendees equipped with 550 rooms, gymnasium and swimming pool, and a 550-seater conference hall to conduct the meetings.

The meeting I attended covered several themes encompassing computational biology and bioinformatics, which included networks, structure and high-throughput sequencing and their applications in cancer and other diseases. Apart from the regular talks, we got ample opportunities to discuss both science and non-science with all attendees during breakfast, tea breaks, lunch and dinner. Myself had a poster displaying my work on mathematical modeling of controllability in cancer networks, and I was happy that Kazuyuki Aihara, who has worked extensively on this problem, got very interested in it.

The talks I gave:
[1] Deciphering novel cellular mechanisms in cancer by integrative network analysis, at Jackie Han's lab on 19th Sep.
[2] Evolution and controllability of cancer networks: a Boolean perspective, at Jackie Han's lab on 19th Sep.
[3] Harnessing DNA damage repair pathways in breast cancer therapy, at InCoB on 20th Sep.
[4] Identifying conserved protein complexes between species by constructing interolog networks, at InCoB on 21st Sep.
[5] Evolution and controllability of cancer networks: a Boolean perspective, poster at CSH-Asia on 24th Sep.

Overall, the trip turned out to be a very enriching experience!

Accompanied by: Hon Wai Leong (NUS), Fan Chang Hao and Daniel Wong from Singapore at PICB and InCoB; Piyush Madhamshettiwar and his wife Pari at InCoB and Suzhou.