Life is more gentle in Marseille compare

Between two scientific conferences, Cheng-Cai Zhang, the new Dean of the Faculty of Luminy, found time to plunge the nose in the books, his other passion with the study of evolutionary biology. At this time, he eats in VO pages of the final novel in his Chinese compatriot Xian Lianke contant the story of a boy in the country that manages to adapt to a difficult environment which is not his. "Is my story, he notes: the course of an alien who must rebuild strong cues from its roots."

From his village of Shiziling in the mountains of the agricultural province of Shandong in Eastern China, the researcher memories of a roman landscape: the fragility of the back bent in the rice fields, the moist atmosphere of the aftermath of rain, leeches... "Life is more gentle in Marseille, compare. I have adopted the framework, the climate, the style and traditions. "Fan running, it will be at the start of the next Marseille-Cassis, an initiation course and a rite for the Marseillais of adoption.

The competition, the challenges, the overflow itself... "I fell into the pot when I was a kid." Selected very young to be the only one of his village to benefit from education, he was detained later among thousands of Chinese students to receive one of the 140 scholarships awarded to study in France. "I played bad luck, he jokes, I preferred the math, I had to choose the biology, or place.

Doped by the challenges

The campus of Luminy where he moved to prepare his thesis the pine and the limestone coves, dress bought at price of gold to be had, in the student community, is impounded at the closet. "I did so far not allowed to mites time to make their feast." His first publication on the genetic mechanisms determining the early stages of the embryo is noticed of the journal of reference PNAS, "a Career Accelerator" which it opens new doors. It doped by challenges, is taking as new bravado to be appointed - at the age of 27 years - lecturer at the Ecole supérieure of biotechnology which opens in Strasbourg in 1991.

Happy pages of his novel that follows to swallow without penalty: his own research team specialises in the understanding of the coping mechanisms of microorganisms, the proliferation of publications (40 to date), then return to Marseille, "my second homeland", on the occasion of a vacancy. At the age where others end their post-doc, he joined the CNRS with his squad of young researchers eager to understand the mechanisms of evolution and survival of microorganisms.

At the time of the next merger of the three universities of Aix-Marseille scheduled for 2012, the Board of Directors of the institution, renewed last November, had no wrong to choose its head of Pack. Elected to the position of Dean unanimously - a first-, Cheng-Cai Zhang will have to make the force the more perilous career agreed to several thousands of students and teachers-researchers. The opportunity to reconnect with the consensus values brought by his people