Siemens Scholar Geoff Tison at Nobel Laureate Meeting

“One of the most important aspects of education is to encourage and ensure the ability to dream.” 

It was in this spirit, and with this tenor of inspiration, that I was allowed to hobknob with those who, at least within the sprawling world of science, seem most suited to offer advice and encouragement to science’s “next generation.” They were Nobel Laureates, each lauded for achievement in a specific, often uber-specialized, area of physiology or medicine. We were eager students and young researchers, many searching for that spark of inspiration or “moment of truth” that would guide us to world renown. But over the course of the week-long conference, which was the 2007 Meeting of Nobel Laureates in Physiology and Medicine in Lindau, Germany, a more humbled sense of duty from the Laureates themselves percolated through the eager young minds: the duty to ourselves and society that the privilege of science carries with it.

The joy of gathering over 500 students and young researchers from 63 different countries to meet with 18 Nobel Laureates is the realization immediately of boundaries already broken and the common bridges formed by the language, passion and optimism for science.  We learned from the Laureates: through lectures, through small discussion sessions, through interdisciplinary panels broaching topics from the environment to the role of science in modern society.  More importantly, as it turned out, we learned from fellow students: from their different perspectives, their varied backgrounds and the myriad of different ways people had of perceiving the same things. The idyllic island of Lindau, situated as it is on Lake Constance which itself boarders three countries, became our international classroom. Everywhere we went, be it lecture, dinner, parks or coffee shops, the island of Lindau was our venue to meet, to talk and to learn. 

My particular fortune to join such an auspicious gathering stemmed from my participation some eight years ago in the Siemens-Westinghouse Science Competition as a high school student. I was among twelve other students or young researchers whom Siemens provided with the opportunity to participate in this conference this year. And it is precisely this type of opportunity—that geared toward bringing students together from around the globe and nurturing their common and unifying loves for science—that companies like Siemens, especially those with a mission in science, should provide.  In business, academia or health policy, people that are open minded and who understand the existence of, if not necessarily the details about, different viewpoints and perspectives are precisely what is needed now in our era of global health interdependence. And it is through exchanges and interactions such as this that an attitude of openness and understanding can be cultivated.