In San Francisco and Los Angeles
by Atsushi Sugimura — I would like to express my sincere gratitude and appreciation to the committee and staff members of the Ito Foundation U.S.A.-FUTI Scholarship for their continued support of my research project in the Mark Twain Papers & Project at University of California, Berkeley. In this report I will offer a brief overview of my recent activities in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party In February I attended the British Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter’s classic play The Birthday Party, one of his so-called “comedies of menace,” with my friend and fellow literary scholar...
The Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
by Kazuhide Okamoto — After earning my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the University of Tokyo, since the fall of 2014, I have been doing my Ph.D. study at the School of Aerospace Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. As I finished taking required classes for my Ph.D. degree, during this semester, I have spent most of my time for research. My research interests lie in the field of control theory, particularly the application of machine-learning methods to control systems to achieve better human-vehicle interactions. In this semester, I have been working...
Friends of UTokyo Periodic Report (Sep – Dec 2018)
by Megumi Asaba — With great appreciation to Ito Foundation U.S.A and Friends of UTokyo, I was able to start my doctoral program at School of Tropical Medicine and Public Health at Tulane University (New Orleans, USA). The department of Global Health and Behavioral Sciences, to which I belong, accommodates students from all over the world with quite welcoming at-home spirit. I am blessed with great cohorts (picture), quite international, from Pakistan, Ghana and the U.S., as well as with my advisor. Although our background and areas of interest are different from each other, we are bonded through sisterhood,...
Master of Landscape Architecture Candidate 2018
by Junpei Asai — 1. Academic Work 1.1 Case Study in SF bay area In Spring 2017, I did a collective case study as a member of a class called Underwater Seminar. The objective is to address the urgent problem of adapting urbanized regions in Sf bay area to rising sea levels and other water related issues with focusing on dynamic interaction among 4 types of water: seawater, groundwater, surface water, and stormwater. Those case studies show a typical issue in managing water systems related to socio-economic conditions. For instance, Hispanic and Black dominant neighborhoods tend to have lower...
My Experience at the University of Tokyo
by Surbhi Bharadwaj — This July I participated in the International Alliance of Research Universities – Global Summer Program (IARU-GSP) at the University of Tokyo. I took a course titled TOK3: Japan in Today’s World and had the opportunity to learn about Japanese public policy and its evolving position in international politics and economy. The course was led by Professor Kiichi Fujawara, focusing on Japanese polity and culture in the 21st century. As an Indian student studying at Yale University in America, I gained valuable knowledge about and insights into the dynamics of East Asia at UTokyo. Our lecturers...
UTRIP 2017 : Six weeks in Tokyo
by Camille Biscarrat — This summer, I had the opportunity to participate in the University of Tokyo Research Internship Program (UTRIP) thanks to the financial support from Friends of UTokyo, Inc. I was a research intern in Professor Goda’s Molecular Imaging and Spectroscopy lab. At my home institution, University of California, Berkeley, I work in the Computational Imaging Lab, where we explore and design new imaging techniques and algorithms, focusing both on hardware and software. It was my research mentor, Professor Waller, who introduced me to Professor Goda’s work on optical time stretch microscopy. The idea of conducting cutting-edge...
Coolest Summer at Berkeley
by Anna Cheung — I could hardly believe that two months had passed and my time at Berkeley had ended when I finally arrived the Narita Airport in Tokyo. During this summer, I had taken two courses, one about “Business Speaking” and the other one about “Analytic Decision Modeling Using Spreadsheets”, in order to learn different cultural differences through formal discussions and sharpen my skills in data analysis. In the former course, I was able to learn and understand the cultural differences and how the nurturing culture affects the way people negotiate, think, decide or act under varying circumstances....
IARU’s Sustainable Urban Management at the University of Tokyo
by Beatrice Ciabattoni — When I first discovered the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU), I was utterly enthralled in the various programs that were offered for the summer of 2017. I finally chose the University of Tokyo’s course on Sustainable Urban Management as this topic was closest to my course of study and interests. In addition, I had never been to Japan before and was very excited to get to know a new city. The University of Tokyo graciously supported me in this endeavor with the Friends of UTokyo Leadership Scholarship and come end of June off I...
Exploring Japan while Broadening my Research Interest
by Yasin Kaya — My first time ever Asia experience has begun with the arrival of 13-hour non-stop flight to Tokyo on the first week of April. I was really excited about spending the next four months at Goda Lab in the University of Tokyo (UTokyo) to broaden my research experience by working on ultrafast florescence imaging systems for biological applications. Thanks to generous support from FUTI and great lab mates at UTokyo, I was fortunate enough to experience the Japanese culture and explore Japan while achieving my academic goals. The first month was an adaptation period for me...
A Summer With “Team N”
by Grace Kuffner — This summer, I worked in Dr. Shinji Nagata’s laboratory (or as the lab members call themselves, “Team N”) at the University of Tokyo Kashiwa campus. It was truly an unforgettable experience, and I learned so much about various scientific ideas and techniques, as well as Japanese language and culture. This internship would have been impossible were it not for the extremely generous scholarship I received from Friends of UTokyo, Inc. In terms of biology, I synthesized and injected a novel cricket signaling protein, truncated neuropeptide F. I also performed RNA interference to silence the expression...