This week we are celebrating International Week at the Isenberg School and our atrium is festooned with flags of different countries as featured above.There are also special activities planned this week to commemorate different countries and international experiences.
And today's Boston Globe is reporting that Massachusetts is one of the top states attracting international students for education, with Boston University, MIT, Harvard, Northeastern, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, being the leading such universities within the state!
Speaking about international experiences, I very much enjoyed the interview on NPR by Ira Flatow with the new NSF Director, Dr. Subra Suresh. In the interview, the transcript of which is available here, Dr. Suresh said: I've been fortunate to have had the experiences that I've had, having been born abroad. And here is the basic truth related to that: Science has no borders, no boundaries, and science is nonpartisan. If you look at the United States, more than half of all the American Nobel laureates in the last 60 years were born abroad.
He also spoke about the importance of collaborations and in bringing different disciplines together to solve the most difficult problems whether in clean energy or transportation (I concur)!
The US continues to be a mecca for education but it is essential that researchers have the support necessary to make fundamental discoveries and breakthroughs. Research requires uninterrupted time for intense work and concentration.
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