Nicholas Lemoine has been the dean of the Academy of Medical Sciences at Zhengzhou University since 2015. The British medical expert devotes his time to reforming the school’s management system and promoting its international cooperation.[Photo provided to China Daily]

"It's more than 10 years old and has had some really exciting discoveries," Lemoine says.

In 2014, the center was approved by the Ministry of Science and Technology as a national-level joint research center for cell and gene therapy - the first in this field in China.

Lemoine is excited about his current work as the dean. He has had an opportunity to completely redesign the school by drawing from advanced international management systems.

"The management has been the exciting part of what the last two years have been about," he says.

The new system has different management and evaluation methods for research platforms and staffers, and he intends to help the university construct an international "talent zone".

He says progress has been much quicker than he imagined, and he is impressed by the speed of "making things happen" here.

But life is not without its challenges, he admits.

He has to deal with the management of human resources, particularly with the current quota system, which, he believes, makes it difficult to change people's working styles.

So he has made special efforts to bring in international faculty.

Also, he has brought several influential international medical experts, including Australian Nobel-Prize-winning physician Barry Marshall, to work for the academy's research centers.

The school has more than 1,000 international graduate and undergraduate students in medicine.

Such an international environment can help the faculty become more competitive and benefit the students by exposing them to different cultures, he believes.

He is happy that he has been able to assemble a good team of committed people to support his venture, and the university president has been very committed to the internationalization agenda.