A clearer look at Asian pollution.

not an actor. But as he sat in his Atlanta hotel room in June 1994, rehearsing the graduate lecture he was to give the next day at Georgia Institute of Technology, he knew that his chances of getting a faculty position rested on his performance in the classroom. “The department was already impressed with my research credentials,” says Wang, who at the time was working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland. “What they wanted to know was: ‘Can this guy speak English? Will he be able to teach?’ ” Growing up in Pucheng, China, Wang had always wanted to be a professor. But after earning his Ph.D. in 1987 from Arizona State University in Tempe, Wang had been turned down for numerous academic posts. Although he couldn’t prove it, he was convinced that his ethnicity had played a significant role in those rejections. “The perception of a language barrier was a bigger obstacle than language itself,” he says. A decade later, as a tenured full professor at Georgia Tech, Wang has long since shattered that barrier. And the 10 students he has helped earn graduate degrees are testimony to his ability to function in a U.S. academic setting. But like thousands of other immigrant scientists, Wang has had to walk the extra mile to gain the acceptance of his U.S. colleagues. In return, U.S.-born scientists have benefited from the cultural influences of their immigrant colleagues and expanded their research horizons. Immigrant scientists often gravitate to scientific problems of pressing interest back home, and links they forge with researchers in the United States and their country of origin have paved the way for increased global collaboration (see below). At the same time, the strength N E W S