For many, voyages to foreign landscapes signify little beyond exotic adventures, and in particular, a legitimate escape from academic drudgeries. No surprise then is the program's ineffective enticement of free fare and living expenses. Though briefly intrigued by its benefit, the blending of recreational delight and obligatory labor eventually disheartens numerous applicants. Nonetheless, no program with visionary aims invests exclusively on pleasantries; instead, as Darwin on his Beagle, Huxley on his Rattlesnake, it supplies its applicant a brigantine for expeditions amidst tempestuous weathers and the raging sea. Recalling upshots of previous sailings, cached ahead of the survivor could be a splendor of intellectual revelation, which, with much perseverance, may even provide the preliminary glimpse into one's own "Origin of Species".

Every stage of human progression was once a seed implanted by the great men of its time. Fostered delicately under their geniuses, it slowly germinates until our view is emblazed by its efflorescence. To the eager young minds that were educated through such influences as Aristotle, Copernicus, and Linnaeus, whom amongst us wishes not to succeed these gardeners of knowledge, participate in its revolution, and transcend the ephemeral while marching into the cosmos of immortality? Tragically, aside from factors of sheer talent and luck, history is stingy in its output of scholarly icons. Enchained by the forever-social temptation to specialize, many of us sacrificed our human completeness in exchange for the expertise of our narrow domain. Yet like tightly enclosed agents within a complex system, those that possess no spatial (in this case, intellectual) elasticity have also no means of "evolution."

The term "polymath" or "renaissance man" has, in modern history, lost its appeal. Due to various factors, contemporary students of the tradition are gradually abandoning their multi-disciplinary interest for the proficiency of specific knowledge and techniques. Reassessing the trade-off, however, does "Jack of one trade" unequivocally propel the "mastery of any?" Science is not the mere buildup of information. Scientific thinking, likewise, is not the brainless application of principles and measurements. Contrarily, known facts alone are but nodes to one's intellectual network forcefully triggered only through the most profound level of personal insight. Often gained via aesthetics, it is thereby, as Einstein, Huxley, and others have admirably illustrated, no coincidence that the scientific giants across centuries were mostly well-educated individuals in the realms of art, music, and literature. Hence upon our lengthy journey, let us be solaced by the sound of Mozart in Vienna, impassioned by the prose of Tolstoy in Moscow, and awakened by the images of Delacroix in Paris.

Aboard, my fellow dreamers! The World waits.

Yun Tao, UBRPer in Dr. Michael Hammer's lab, Genomic Analysis and Technology Core (GATC) and ARL Biotechnology..