My name is Joyce Tsuchiya, from Brazil. I’m an ophthalmologist by training and I practiced for six years as a cataract surgeon and cornea specialist before deciding to pursue a career change. I come to IMD for a new challenge, big emotions and self development.
photo taken by my colleague Rodrigo Freire
Dreams are where we all started, high expectations and lots of hope. We arrived at IMD’s campus all keen on meeting each other, learning and eager for the new experiences to come. We had been listening for quite a while on how IMD’s program is comprehensive, and how it approaches business education from a holistic perspective. We heard about the experienced professors from whom we were going to learn and all the important people we would get to meet. But then, our dreams met reality, and we got hit head front by the first week of IMD’s insane schedule. By the 4th day I was already sleep deprived and started to question my sanity when I decided to pursue such program. It was a hectic, exhausting and an emotional week, and IMD was not about to let it end without a grand finale.
For the 5th day of our journey, we had two off-campus visits on our program, we were supposed to go to Genéve in order to visit EPFL’s (École Politechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) campus biotech and the CERN (read Martina’s post about that part of the visit here). Campus biotech is one of those places science folks dream about. – It is home to the Wyss Center and the Blue Brain Project.
The Blue Brain project is a brain mapping effort, its goal is to create a biologically detailed digital reconstruction of the rodent brain. But you could also call it ‘the perfect marriage between business and research’. BBP develops cutting edge research supported by a professional operation. The project management office controls and facilitates initiatives, in a methodology based on agile and waterfall. Every project must have a science lead, an engineering lead and a project manager.
In such environment, the most audacious ideas flourish. For instance, the e-dura, a flexible implant that can be used for many things, among them bridging a damaged spinal cord and the brain through a computerized interface, therefore restoring walking capability to paralyzed patients. Or the neurohabilitation treatment that helps stroke patients recover movements. And a project very close to my heart, a retina implant based on tiny photovoltaic cells (20.000 of them!) that restore eyesight to blind people.
EPFL campus biotech is where dreams meet reality, where science meets business. A place where research is professionally managed and organized so that scientists get to build on each other’s work and all of this allows researchers to deliver actionable knowledge and give back to society. Thank you IMD, for taking us there and for showing us how business can be a powerful transformative force.
– Joyce
