Susana Novais: For love of Macau

Macanese at heart, Susana Novais Santos feels at home in Macau and that’s why she came back a few months ago, after a two year experience living here during the Portuguese administration, as her parents were invited to work in the territory.

For love of Macau, and because she feels that this region has a lot to offer to a young but experienced brain scientist, Susana Novais Santos currently works as an Assistant Professor and Co-Coordinator for IIUM’s Center for Research in the Health Sciences, in addition to being a Scientific Advisor for the Art Research Center for Human Expressions (ARCHE) at IIUM’s School of Arts, Letters and Sciences.
MDTimes spoke with her to try to understand what made a young scientist return to a city where casino chips speak louder than anything.

MDTimes - When did you fall in love with Macau?

Susana Novais Santos - I first came to Macau in 1991 because my parents were invited to come and work in the territory at that time. In the beginning, I admit that I was afraid to come, because, at the age of 16, I had my own group of friends in Portugal, as well as an organised life, as I was a swimmer and gymnast.
So, it was with some fear that I came, but all that distress quickly vanished, and my adaptation was almost immediate.

“Unlike many people my age, who were more concerned about night life, I came to Macau with an open, curious spirit, desiring to learn everything and trying to absorb the local culture.”

Upon my arrival, I loved pretty much everything I saw, and after a month I was quite well adapted, could already say a few words in Chinese, and was truly happy. It was really love at first sight.

Unlike many people my age, who were more concerned about night life, I came to Macau with an open, curious spirit, desiring to learn everything and trying to absorb the local culture.
Therefore, I would visit temples and gardens regularly, started doing Tai Chi and Qi Gong, and made many Chinese friends, who taught me a lot about their culture.
I remember them joking with me, saying that I was more Chinese than they were, because when we went out for dinner, they would drink Coca-Cola or beer and I always drank tea.
For all of these and many other reasons, Macau was very important in my life. I was deeply happy here and really enjoyed the experience, and was rather sorry and upset when I had to go back to Portugal.
When I finished the 12th grade (and was the best student of the Portuguese School), my parents thought I should better go back to Portugal to attend university.
I went to Portugal, but Macau never left my heart and spirit – and that is why I came back.

MDTimes - But you continued connected to Macau and Chinese culture in Portugal?

SNS - I started studying Mandarin Chinese at the Macau Mission in Lisbon, while attending Instituto Superior Técnico [where I graduated in Computer Science and Engineering, with a thesis focusing on a digital recogniser of Chinese characters]. In the summer of 1997, I went to Beijing to attend an intensive course on Chinese Language and Culture, and I liked it so much that when I arrived, I told my parents, right at the airport, that I would go back again but for a whole year.
And that is exactly what happened: I went to Shanghai for a whole year to attend a course that provided me with a degree equivalence in Chinese Language and Culture. At the same time, in Shanghai, I was working as a teacher of English as a Foreign Language at an elementary school, which was a very enriching experience.

“They [Imperial College] suggested that I should stay to do the PhD, which would be the easiest option, as after just two more years I would have the PhD. But I never go for the easy option, I always choose the most difficult, the most challenging one, and so I decided to go to the United States for my PhD.”

In Shanghai, I did the HSK, which is the Chinese equivalent of the Certificate of Proficiency in English, and thought that my mission was done and that it was time to return to science. So, I decided to go to the UK and pursue a Masters degree at Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of London.

MDTimes - Expanding your knowledge was a top priority?

SNS - I always knew I wanted to pursue Graduate Studies, a Masters and a PhD – it was something I had clearly set in my mind since I was little. I have always been interested in the brain, in particular, as well as in medicine, in general. It was rather hard to decide between studying medicine and engineering, but since I loved math so much I decided to go for engineering.
But as the ‘love’ for medicine remained, I thought it would be a good idea to conciliate my engineering background with my passion for medicine, and so I chose to do an MSc in Engineering and Physical Science in Medicine at Imperial College, and it was wonderful. I liked it a lot and learned a lot, also because they had two specialisations, Biomechanics and Medical Imaging, and I was the only person to ever graduate in both. I remember having eight exams in three consecutive days… It was rather violent but I made it.

MDTimes - And then you were invited to stay in London to finish your PhD...

SNS - They [Imperial College] suggested that I should stay to do the PhD, which would be the easiest option, as after just two more years I would have the PhD. But I never go for the easy option, I always choose the most difficult, the most challenging one, and so I decided to go to the United States for my PhD.
I applied for several universities and was accepted in all of them, but in the meanwhile I had the opportunity to work at the European Institute of Bioinformatics, in Cambridge, in the human genome project, and I thought it was an amazing opportunity, because at that time, that project was very important, and so I stayed there for almost a year.
Then, I went to the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, to do my PhD. I chose that university not only because it was the oldest program in Bioengineering, the first ever in the U.S., but also because it is an Ivy League school, which means that is one of the best universities in the world, and, in addition, it has a university hospital [the second best hospital in the USA] on campus, which promotes the interaction between the engineering school and the medical school.

“I would like to use neuroscience techniques to understand how traditional Chinese medicine works, and in particular, to understand exactly the diverse effects that traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture have on the human body.”

Any doctoral program there encourages students to do what they call ‘rotations’, which means to work in several different laboratories, in order to be exposed to various methods, techniques and different areas of science.
I worked at three different laboratories until, in my fourth year, I went to a lab where I did my doctoral thesis on neural mechanisms of decision-making, in which I described which areas of the brain are involved in the complex process of making decisions, especially in situations of uncertainty, and how they work together to devise strategies and solve problems.
We reached very interesting and groundbreaking conclusions, as we used a linguistic task in which people had to read sentences and make decisions about those sentences, and we ended up concluding that the brain regions that are active in this type of decision-making are generic, rather than task-specific, since they are the same that are involved in other types of decision-making situations, such as gambling.

MDTimes - After the PhD you went back to Portugal, even though you were invited to stay in Philadelphia. Why?

SNS - Yes, they also invited me to stay, not only at the University of Pennsylvania, but also at the National Institutes of Health in Washington, DC, as well as some other places. But I thought it was time to return to Portugal and give back to the country what it had invested on me, since I had been awarded scholarships both for my Masters and my PhD.
In my first year in Portugal, I was a professor at the Catholic University in Lisbon. It was not a pleasant experience because, after having lived for 12 years away, the adaptation was not too easy, and university life in Portugal is very different from that in the US. So I decided to leave.
I was invited to join to the neuroscience group of the Champalimaud Foundation, where I worked in a project regarding decision-making, but in rats and mice.
The experience was interesting, but I did not enjoy working with animals, as I wanted to work with humans.
It was then, when I was wondering about what to do with my life, that I was invited by Casa de Macau in Portugal to come here and attend the meeting of the Macanese youth community.
I hadn’t been to Macau in over 10 years, and this invitation came at a time in which I was available, both emotionally and professionally, to make a big change in my life. There was no better timing, actually.
The last time I had been in Macau was in December of 1998, before the transition, and so I hadn’t seen Macau after the handover to China. I only came back in July of this year.
The feeling I had the day I arrived is indescribable, and I’m still shivering just by thinking about it. I arrived and thought that, in fact, this is my home, there is no place in the world where I feel more at home than in Macau. I lived here for two years only, but those years marked me deeply.

MDTimes - But having lived in Europe and the U.S., Macau seems to offer less than what you were used to.

SNS - In fact, I do have a great American influence, because those years you spend doing a PhD are very important years, which influence the way a person thinks and how you relate with others. Even my friends say that I am very American and I admit it and I am quite proud to be like that.
But emotionally speaking, I was thrilled when I arrived; I met a friend of my parents shortly after arriving and he told me I had a beautiful smile and I said it was my Macau smile, which I still have on.
I had several meetings here, I talked to several people involved in the Macanese youth meeting, and I felt that local institutions were trying to attract young people. Since I have a background that is quite different from most people, and I love Macau, there was a mutual interest and, in particular, the proposal of the Institute (IIUM) was excellent.
I have an idea for a research project, an investigation path that I would like to follow, and which until now has never been possible, neither in Portugal nor in the U.S., and I think that Macau is the ideal place to pursue it – it is the fusion between neuroscience and traditional Chinese medicine. I am a strong believer of this kind of medicine, as it has been around for thousands of years, and have been studying the subject for a long time, albeit not in a formal manner.

“Everything is starting here – in the Pearl River Delta region there is a lot happening, there are many universities, many students and great interest. I see that there is a huge thirst for development and the future is in Asia, as the whole world is looking to China and India.”

I would like to use neuroscience techniques to understand how traditional Chinese medicine works, and in particular, to understand exactly the diverse effects that traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture have on the human body.
In addition, I was recently appointed Co-coordinator of the Center for Research in the Health Sciences, as well as Scientific Advisor of the Art Research Center for Human Expressions (ARCHE). Therefore, I think that this is an ideal opportunity to develop a project in this area.

MDTimes - A project on gambling is something you want to develop in Macau?

SNS - Macau is the perfect place to do that kind of study [on gambling], and I believe that there will be many volunteers, and, in fact, that is an idea for a project that I would like to develop.
I want to unravel the impulses that people feel when they are gambling, to understand how and when one has these compulsive behaviors, or how someone weighs the pros and cons, the motivations that lead them to gamble, and then all the repercussions to their personal lives.
It would be interesting to start with the common citizen, who plays only every once in a while, in order to understand what his motivations are when he gambles, and then move on up the scale of dependence.
Besides, Macau Inter-University Institute (IIUM) is developing other projects, in which I am personally involved. With other colleagues, I am organizing a pioneer conference in Asia, entitled “Musicognition 2009 – The Musical Brain”, which will happen on November 18, here at IIUM.
We have invited experts from Japan, such as Dr. Rie Matsunaga from the Department of Psychology of the Hokkaido University, Dr. Wichian Sittiprapaporn from the College of Music, Mahidol University in Thailand, and Dr. Djohan Salim from the Indonesia Institute of the Arts Yogyakarta.

MDTimes - Why did you choose Macau instead of the US, where you have all the infrastructures available to develop those projects?

SNS - Everything is starting here – in the Pearl River Delta region there is a lot happening, there are many universities, many students and great interest. I see that there is a huge thirst for development and the future is in Asia, as the whole world is looking to China and India.
On the other hand, I think that there is high mobility of both people and ideas. The U.S. is a melting pot, but Macau is also a fusion centre of different cultures and different ideas, and that is how the best ideas come up. I think that this region could be a source of a lot of research and a lot of development in many areas.
I wish that Macau was known for other things besides gambling. A short time ago I was in Vietnam and someone asked me where I came from and they always say: Macau? Casino, casino.
Life can be easy in Macau, as circulation is easy, not only in terms of transport but also of ideas.
A concern I have is that in the US I had access to large libraries and on-line publications but the access here is limited. However, I expect that to change in time, as there are many resources in Macau, along with a strong desire to succeed. In general, I am very happy with my decision to come back to Macau and I am sure that lots of nice things will happen in the near future.