1. Dr. Young

Eric's style of advising grad students is unique. The relationship between students and him can be described as both close and detached. He maintains a certain distance with the students by being relatively serious all the time, especially during work time. But he is not too serious to the degree of being boring. In fact, he always has a sense of measured sense of humor. Despite this constantly maintained detachment, he always acts like a role model to all the students around him. He gets to his lab early and leaves late every day. He even works on in his office on Saturdays. When he is in the lab, he always keeps the door open and sit to his desk with his back to the door. When he is alone in his office, he is always seen working in a focused and attentive way, which creates an atmosphere of hardworking in the lab. However attentive he seems to work at his desk, he is always ready to turn around and talk to you when you comes to his office. You don't have to make any appointment with him unless your discussion with him will be a long one. He is an excellent person to consult when you have literature or research related problems. He seems to have a record of all the published works in the field of auditory neurophysiology in his mind. When you leaves his office, you feel not only satisfied, but also awed.

Eric is not a pushy supervisor. But he won't allow his postdocs and students to be idlers. Periodic, individual meetings held with postdocs and students is a gentle yet powerful spur of their works. Eric is not the kind of advisor who only "thinks" and leaves field and bench work to postdocs and students. He often do work (surgery, experiments) with students and postdocs. He is happy to work like colleagues even with master's students. I once met him on a Saturday when he was fixing some broken equipment in the recording chamber. He is the final line of defense against bizarre equipment and surgical problems in the lab, and this line is seldomly broken. Even at the age of 65+, Eric is still and avid learner and curious explorer. He likes to introduce new ways of thinking and new methods of experimentation into his lab, with his students or alone.

Devotion, expertise, erudition, experience, reliability - these are the words which I can think of to describe Dr. Young. When I was reading the acknowledgment section a former grad student's thesis, I was kind of skeptical of her compliment of Eric, which at that time seemed exaggerated and even flattery to me. In retrospect, what she wrote was the truth.

2. Dr. May's humor

Dr. May is the person who teaches me what real sense of humor is. Witty comments and impish sarcasms about news is uttered in a semi-serious way. This kind of personality establishes an easy and energetic atmosphere around him. Everyone enjoys being in his company. Despite being a soft-spoken person, his words are often cogent and sometimes deep.

3. Diana

In retrospect, Diana devoted a lot of time and energy to Ben and me, the two master's students in the lab at that timt. Without Diana, neither of us would be so well off. If working with Eric taught me how to be a good professor, working with Diana taught me what a good postdoc should be like. Diana is not as knowledgeable and as smart as Eric, but she works wholeheartedly on her project and on mentoring students in the lab. At that time, I was a slow learner in animal surgery. Diana spent hours and hours with me helping me acquire this skill gradually. But she knew when to withdraw her help hand to push me and Ben to become more independent. The more I looked back, the more I became aware how excellent an teacher and colleague she was. In a way similar to Dr. May, Diana also has a pleasant personality. She does the bulk of talking during th lab's daily lunch meetings. She is the person in charge of writing birthday cards to memers the lab. She also takes the lead in bringing homemade desserts to the lab to share with others. Without her, the lab wouldn't have been such a family-like and happy environment.

4. Neural Encoding Lab's daily lunch meeting

In my experience, Dr. Young's lab (Neural Encoding Lab) is the only lab in which the PIs (Dr. Young and Dr. May) have lunch together with postdocs and students every day. Almost every noon, all people walk from the Traylor Research Building to the East Market, buy food there, and then walk back to the conference room in the building to luncheon together. This is an informal yet precious opportuninty for postdocs and students to develop personal relationships with the professors and with each other, which will eventually benefit the mutual trust and social well-being of every member of the lab. Of course, you can also discuss academic problems with the professors or anyone else along the way, which provides an additional opportuninty of brainstorming, idea sharing and questoin solving, in addition to the formal meetings.

5. The Traylor Research Building

Traylor Research Building is definitely an exciting place. During the years their, I come to realize how great the works being done by people like Dr. Xiaoqin Wang and Dr. Reza Shadmehr are. These are only examples. On every floor, their are cutting edge research going on. The housekeeping staff of the Traylor Building is also great to have around. Everyday, those African American ladies happily say hello and how are you to every lab they cleans. The one I remember the best is Teresa, who developed a relationship with everyone in our lab, which she is in primary charge of houeskeeping. When she leaves for her yearly vacation, people in the lab feel that something was missing.

6. The Hopkins Shuttle

The JHU shuttle connects the main campus (Homewood), the conservatory and the medical campus of the university, which are about 10 miles apart in the city of Baltimore. Every day, these shuttles run punctually from about 6 AM to 11:30 PM. The drivers are also mostly African American, who are reliable and professional drivers. When people gets off the bus in line, everybody says thank you to the driver. The driver says "you are welcome" to everyone in return. They probably do this 10 times a day, 5 days a week. But they never seemed to be tired of this. They enjoy their work, and enjoy seeing others appreciate their work. This kind of mutual trust and love between people is priceless. The scenery along the shuttle's path cannot be described as charming. But over the two years, I developed a unique emotional attachment to it. In other words, I like it. The gothic Church at the Homewood terminal, the small business and the Baltimore-style row houses on the North Charles Street, the Washington monument on Mount Vernon, will all stay in my long-term memory.

Today I interviewed an applicant to our PhD program. It was the first time I have ever been an interviewer, rather than an interviewee (apart from being on the audition committee at the wind ensemble of Tsinghua University). The experience was rather interesting. The interviewee is an undergraduate student from JHU, who had a co-authored paper published as early as his junior year. He also had a conference poster and a book chapter. So it was relatively easy finding questions to ask. The following are what I learned from this process.
1) The interview is your job to figure out as much as possible about the applicant in a given period of time. You must always be in control, not the applicant. So when the applicant goes into great details talking about the things he likes to talk about (e.g., his research project), you want to find a way to politely stop him and channel the conversation into more informative topics. Otherwise time will be wasted.
2) Try to push the applicant to his limit. When he handles all the prior questions well, ask him more difficult ones, until he fails to generate a satisfactory answer. Only in that way you'll be able to fathom his depth and breadth of knowledge.
3) Try from time to time to encourage the applicant. Make positive comments about his achievements listed on the CV. When he makes mistakes in answering your questions, try to ease the atmosphere. After all, the purpose of the interview is not to stress the applicant. In a relaxed environment, the applicant will gain more confidence, and you'll more likely see a true person.
4) Ask more "why" questions. For example, why he chose a specific area of research. The answers to those questions can often tell you more about this person that what he did.
5) Relate to the applicant by telling your own stories from time to time. It's quite tiring and frustrating for the applicant to talk all the way through the 45 minutes. Make it easier for him.
6) Prepare a list of questions beforehand if possible. That way you'll prevent embarrasing silences (although that's not very likely). However, interviewing is a dynamic process. Don't stick to the plan. Steer the direction accoding to what you hear and what you see.
7) Finally, when it comes to report writing, write a balanced report that speaks of both the strenghts and the weakness of the applicant.
Of course, I didn't do all the above perfectly. I made some mistakes, such as not having asked enough "why" questions. But with this experience, I'm confident that I'll be a better interviewer next time.