Dr. Jim Fuxa from Louisiana State University, USA, Visited Biofuels Institute and Delivered a Series of Lectures on Scientific Writing

Dr. James R. Fuxa, a senior professor come from Louisiana State University, USA, visited Biofuels Institute, Jiangsu University (JU) on November 17-18, 2014; and during his stay, he also delivered a series of two impressive lectures titled as “From Blank Page to Publication” at JU conference center. For his lectures, more than 60 faculties and graduate students from Biofuels Institute and other colleges at JU participated his lectures. Dr. Fuxa’s visit to JU was sincerely invited by Dr. Jianzhong Sun, an outstanding professor and director of Biofuels Institute, JU.

In his two days’ consecutive lectures, Dr. Fuxa first introduced some important and authoritative references to the audience for a scientific writing. Impressively, he well organized his lectures on some basic writing principles, general steps, as well as some essential writing skills during the development of a scientific manuscript. His lectures primarily included five essential sections that consisted of “Introduction, Mechanics of the first draft – the paper’s logical foundation, Improvement of Writing Style, Reviewers and Editors, and Conclusion”.

In his serial presentations, Dr. Fuxa also emphasized his presentations on some common errors/mistakes occurred for some junior scientists/graduate students, which included some inappropriate use of some subtle English words, which were important for a qualified writing.

Prior to ending his lecture, Dr. Fuxa also provided a question session to our audience and answered some questions or concerns from audience with his suggestions so as to well guide our faculty and students to develop a qualified manuscript and become a matured and experienced writer towards scientific writing.

After the lecture, accompanied by Dr. Jianzhong Sun, Dr. Fuxa toured the laboratory and the relevant facilities at Biofuels Institute. Dr. Fuxa was impressed with our research achievements, laboratory facility, as well as the efficient management of our teamwork at Biofuels Institute at JU.

Dr. Fuxa is a senior professor at Louisiana State University in the United States, mainly engaged in plant pathogenic microorganism, especially for the pathogenic microorganisms of insects, such as viruses, fungi, bacteria etc.; and carried out the extensive and in-depth research of crop pest control. Dr. Fuxa is one of the world's top experts in the field of biological control, and he firstly established epizootiology as a discipline of insect pathology with the publication of a major reference, “Epizootiology of Insect Diseases”, which included formalized terminology and techniques, as well as a literature review of 16 sub-topics; Up to current, he has edited 4 scientific books (a book has also been translated into Chinese in the 1990’s), 21 book chapters, >120 peer reviewed papers and other 56 academic publications in this field.