Professor Chiang Ann-Shyn, Director of the Brain Research Center at NTHU, was invited by the US Oceanographic Institution and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory for lectures on "Building a Wiring Diagram of the Drosophila Brain"*. Among the audience at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory was James D. Watson, the Nobel Prize winner who discovered the DNA double helix. At the end of the lecture, an enthusiastic Watson and Chiang exchanged many views on the topic, for it was the first time that the eighty-year-old Watson saw the actual wiring diagram of the Drosophila brain. Watson continued to discuss neural networks after the lecture with Chiang and then invited Chiang and his wife to his home for dinner.

Mr. and Mrs. Watson prepared a feast for their guests and applauded Chiang for constructing the wiring diagram and his devotion to research. The Nobel laureate told Chiang that there are four goals which he considers to be of the greatest importance in his life: 1. To crack the DNA double helix; 2. establish the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (now a top cancer and neural science research center in the world); 3. initiate the Human Genome Project; and 4. unravel the neural networks in the human brain. The first three goals were either completed or initiated in 1953, 2000 and 2003, respectively, leaving only the much anticipated last one waiting to be achieved. In fact, Francis Crick who received the Nobel Prize with Watson had also been studying the human consciousness during his later years. In his book The Astonishing Hypothesis, Crick pointed out that the neural network connections in the brain is the origin of consciousness. Now that Watson sees the model of the wiring diagram of the Drosophila brain, he knows that it is only a matter of time for the mystery of the complete neural networks and workings of the brain to be solved.

In early 2001 when Chiang Ann-Shyn first visited the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, researchers there were so impressed by his bio-imaging technology that they called him a "magic finger" from Taiwan and hoped to recruit him. Chiang, however, preferred to do his research in Taiwan. Later he published exceptional papers in top journals including Cell and Nature Neuroscience, marking the first Taiwanese researcher to publish in these journals. Watson pointed out that the research results by Chiang and his team in Taiwan are remarkable accomplishments.

Title and location of Chiang Ann-Shyn's recent lectures in the United States:
06.30.2008	Building a Wiring Diagram of the Drosophila Brain. Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, MA, USA.
07.10.2008	Building a Wiring Diagram of the Drosophila Brain. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY, USA.