Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government
Ayako Sakamoto Fall Semester I successfully completed six courses with 22 credits in this fall semester. One of the most interesting courses was “Exercising Leadership: The Politics of Change”, which is originally taught and structured by Professor Ronald Heifetz. According to Professor Heifetz, the leadership is to lead people to face a challenge which they would have avoided otherwise. This definition of leadership itself was new to me because I had always thought that leadership is the ability to mobilize people towards your goal/vision. Through this course, I learned how to diagnose group dynamics (stakes, fractions) and when /towards which direction I need to intervene the group and how important to distinguish technical fix and adaptive challenge. I realized that Japan has many adaptive challenges which people have avoided facing and discussing, and we might not have leaders who can lead people to face those issues at this moment. I met Japanese HKS students who shared the same opinion mentioned above with me and we are planning to continue our discussion about what adaptive challenges Japan have and how we can work on them. I took two courses related to finance. One is “Private Capital for Public Purpose: Impact Investing and Its Siblings”. This course taught me the trend of impact investing in private capital to work for public purpose such as climate change, gender equality and community development. Though it is rather a new field, and the standards of impact measurement and investment criteria are not well established, it is growing rapidly and has huge potential to make an impact on those fields. The other course is “Advanced Risk Management and Infrastructure Finance”. This course taught me an advanced treatment of the theory of financial risk management and its application to infrastructure finance. Through this course, I learned what kind of financial schemes and tools I can use and what kind of risks I should consider when building infrastructure projects such as solar power plants in developing countries. I would like to work on climate change (especially electrification with renewable energy) and gender equality from the perspective of finance, and these course helped me to have better vision about what I would like to do after my graduation. Aside from the course work, I organized an event for HKS students as a chair of Japan Caucus (Student organization at HKS) to introduce Japanese culture such as Japanese food, tea ceremony, calligraphy and traditional games this November. I prepared for this event with 17 Japan Caucus members and finally over 150 HKS students joined the event. I was glad that they enjoyed not only Sushi but also other aspects of Japanese culture which they probably hadn’t had chance to know before the event. Living abroad, I often noticed that Japanese culture is westernized outside Japan and their understanding about Japan is incomplete if not wrong. I hope that we can introduce diverse culture of Japan which foreign students could not know through western media, through the activity of Japan Caucus. Summary and Take-aways My school experience at HKS was totally different from the first year. The first semester was completely remote in 2020 and I even couldn’t enter the US so that I took all the courses remotely in Mexico with my classmates. The second semester was hybrid-class in Cambridge in the U.S., but there were no in-person school events and no student gatherings at HKS was allowed so that I could interact with only MPA/ID students. Though I was happy that our classmates got so closed to each other like a family, I did not have chance to know people outside my program. This semester, the school got back to relatively normal, and all the students came back to the HKS campus. I could meet and learnt from various people outside my program even outside HKS, which gave me new perspectives to see the world. All these experiences made me realize that learning comes not only from lectures or/and books but from open-hearted deep conversations with people from diverse background. I still feel that zoom meeting cannot replace in-person meeting if the purpose is to build friendship/trust and make such a deep/open-hearted conversation.
ICPSR Summer Program Report
by Satoru Kawashima The University of Tokyo second-year master student This summer, I participated in ICPSR summer program online. ICPSR (Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research) is one of the most famous institution that archives data in social science. ICPSR has offered the summer program for graduate students and researchers every year, which consists of a wide variety of workshops and lectures on quantitative methods and modeling. This program had been offered in University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, but due to COVID-19, the program was carried out online this year. Having heard about the program, I was interested in attending this program because the program mainly targets at graduate students majoring in political science and sociology, and we can learn statistical methods in a well-designed and systematic way. I completed two workshops (each of which has a 4 weeks course) and several lectures (each of which has a 4 weeks course with no assignments). The two workshops were Maximum Likelihood Estimation(MLE) and Text Analysis. Both of workshops required submission of assignments every week, so I received lectures and reviewed them on weekdays and I did my homework on weekends. Thus, it was a very hard time for me, but it was also very fruitful. In the MLE workshop, I learned statistical methods toward categorical data. I had learned the content partially before the program, but through the well-designed lecture, I comprehend it more systematically and more profoundly. The knowledge I acquired there will be useful in my research to analyze people’s awareness. In the Text Analysis workshop, I learned the skills to analyze text as data and I acquired programming skills for this purpose. These methods recently have been popular in the field of political science, but this type of lecture is not offered sufficiently in my university. Through this workshop, I understood the methods systematically and made a projection for my future research. In several lectures, I learned mathematics for social science and skills for LaTeX. They are basic knowledge and skills for quantitative methods, so they will help to deepen my learning. Moreover, the program recommended auditing, so I audited several workshops. Without requirement of submitting assignments, auditing was really useful to study various quantitative methods in a relaxed manner. For example, although I had studied causal inference in japan previously, I audited Causal Inference workshop. This was an interesting and meaningful experience because the content included different things and I was able to relearn causal inference in English and gain a better understanding of it. The students seemed come from all over the world and the participants were of various ages. I hoped that I established good relationships with graduate students abroad, but because this program was online and because of the time difference, I had difficulties and few opportunities to interact with other students. However, when I had a question, I made sure to go to the Office Hours and solved my problems by interacting with teaching assistants. Thus, I got a valuable experience in learning new skills in English. What I realized in this summer program is more than I had expected, and I strongly believe it will contribute to my future research. I am grateful for this opportunity, and I would like to sincerely express my gratitude to FUTI for offering the generous scholarship.
ITO FOUNDATION U.S.A.-FUTI Scholarship Final report for the academic year 2020-2021
by Tomohito Okuda Master in Public Administration in International Development & MBA Candidate 2022 Harvard Kennedy School & MIT Sloan School of Management Spring Semester I successfully completed the courses with 78 credits in total (Appendix), including 54 credits completed as a “regular” participant and 24 credits completed as a “listener.” The most interesting course in the spring semester was D-Lab: Water, Sanitation and Hygiene. D-Lab (“D” stands for design and development) is a series of courses at MIT that provides students with the opportunities to work with local communities in developing countries. Participants form teams and design affordable and replicable solutions to various issues. In D-Lab: Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, we tackled with issues in water, sanitation and hygiene. Our team, consisted of an undergraduate student, a Ph.D. student from University of British Columbia, and myself, dealt with a lack of potable water in low-income communities in Madagascar. With help of a research team of mechanical engineering at MIT, and in collaboration with a social enterprise in Madagascar, we created a prototype of micro-desalination units. The small device uses solar energy and seawater and has a potential of producing freshwater that would satisfy the water needs of a household (up to ~6 L/m2h according to the lab test). Due to the COVID-19, we could not use the facilities at MIT, but our team achieved to create the prototype in Cambridge by decomposing the operation, and the learnings from this prototype was shared with the local partner to build their prototype in Madagascar. Although the water production rate of our prototypes is still very low, we confirmed the prototypes are working. The team members and the social enterprise agreed to continue collaborating informally after the semester. Summary and Take-aways This year will stay in my memory as a unique, interesting experience. The school went online just after the mid-term exam in the spring semester 2020. Since then, people faced a series of unprecedented challenges. The students and employers had to reformulate their internship plans. Some schools decided to provide their programs only remotely, whereas other schools, including MIT Sloan, adapted their operations to provide in-person classes. The unfortunate part was the reduced opportunities to meet people and enjoy the public space. The trade-off of the public health and the benefits of face-to-face meetings had different implications among people, which led to the tensions between people. For example, some students at MIT ignored the school policy, had a large social gathering, and the school stopped in-person classes for weeks after it found out the event. Some of the people in the event did not feel guilty because they do not agree with the school policy, which was decided, according to them, without incorporating the students’ opinions. Other students were furious about those students. The SNS of the school went wild for a few days after that. I experienced hundreds of episodes like this this year. But for the pandemic, I would not be exposed to such sensitive discussions. Throughout this experience, I reconfirmed the difficulties to control democratic society and became more cautious about how people perceive the actions and words of others. We observed behavioral difference among people with different backgrounds and policy difference between countries, which will be analyzed intensively in the coming few years. Since I belong to very diverse communities, I had many opportunities to try to understand each person’s perceptions and learn from others. The good part was that I observed the strengths of people. Despite the irregularity, everyone considered how to adapt to the new environment and took actions. I believe the quality of the education was maintained at a high level, and I could experience a unique moment in a very diverse environment. It was thanks to the support of the ITO FOUNDATION U.S.A. and Friends of UTokyo, Inc., that I could focus on my studies in such an environment. Using the skills I learned in the last two years, I will take a deep-dive into some of the areas I am most interested in the final year.
My second and final year at the University of Chicago
by Taro Kunimitsu My second and final year at the University of Chicago was very different from what I expected. First and foremost, I had not expected my studies to be in the midst of a global pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic made all activities at the university online ― including interactions with my advisors and peers. As a graduate student majoring in public policy, I was expecting to have in-depth discussions on policy topics face-to-face and in-person soft-skills training for policy practice throughout the program. Since these were no longer possible, I needed to reconsider what and how to learn during the program to achieve the most within the remote-learning environment posed by the pandemic. I also had another unexpected personal situation that I needed to deal with. My wife, an evolutionary biologist, obtained a tenure-track faculty position at a university in Norway at the start of the academic year. As much as I was proud of her, I also needed to decide what I should do after graduation accordingly and to rethink what I should learn to broaden my possibilities post-graduation. Although these were challenging issues, I believe I was able to coordinate an optimal learning portfolio for the year, and I indeed achieved a great amount through my studies at the University of Chicago, thanks to support from my family, friends, and not least through programming at the Friends of UTokyo. The following will be some details of what I had in mind this year. Online learning made soft-skills development within the degree program difficult, but on the other hand, it made learning technical skills much more convenient, through the enhanced use of digital technologies and learning methods such as flipped classrooms. Given that condition, I wanted to focus on technical skills that could be used both in policy analysis (which was the most probable career after graduating) and also in other possible career paths including research. My decision was to focus on economics and machine learning. The policy program at the University of Chicago already had a strong focus on economics compared to other policy programs in the US, but it was still at an entry level for policy practitioners, so I needed to find specialized courses that would prepare me for research level analysis. I had taken PhD-level economics courses in the first year, so I decided to join PhD students in a seminar-like lecture series on energy and environmental economics. Since I had work experience on nuclear energy policy, the topics were somewhat familiar to me, but the courses familiarized me with the economist’s way of thinking, and they also taught me solid techniques for quantitatively analyzing policy, through ideas such as the social cost of carbon. Discussing with top economists in the University of Chicago faculty was always enlightening, and I am confident that I received the best education in the field. Modern data analysis skills were going to be essential for any serious quantitative work, irrespective of whether I went back to policy making or not. A huge aspect of this was to be able to use machine learning methods at the research level. With this in mind, I decided to take courses at the Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago, a graduate institute on the University of Chicago campus with a focus on machine learning. I ended up taking 4 PhD courses from the institute. I was able to greatly deepen my understanding of machine learning and computer science, spanning from deep learning to graph algorithms. I also spent two months as a research assistant for a project on time-series forecasting of electricity usage. This familiarized me with real world usage of machine learning, preparing me for careers that require data analysis. What I learned this year was not limited to the program contents I just mentioned, but also came from the experiences and events I went through. When my wife started working in Norway in November, I was able to accompany her there for two months without any interruption to my studies, thanks to remote learning technologies. Other than time difference issues, I was able to take courses and do research in almost the same way as I would have in Chicago. My experience of studying from Norway made me recognize that higher education had huge under-explored possibilities. If done flexibly, it seems universities would be able to connect with far more students around the world. Time management was another difficult issue in my pandemic experience, due to the flexibility in schedule of working from home, which meant nothing forced me to work during specific hours. Allocating time to do specifically what was required, and sticking to that schedule whatever the situation, was one skill I was able to strengthen thanks to the pandemic. I believe these experiences at the University of Chicago will be invaluable throughout my whole career. As for my career path after graduation, I chose to accompany my wife to Norway and to work as a researcher in climate change impacts. I will be working as a senior researcher at the Center for International Climate Research (CICERO) in Oslo from August. I will be making full use of what I have achieved during my years at Chicago ― research skills in environmental economics and modern statistical methods including machine learning. Once again, I would like to thank Ito Foundation U.S.A and Friends of UTokyo, Inc. for their support throughout the year. Without their support, I would not have made it through the degree program, at least without having financial and other concerns. The online gatherings in the Friends of UTokyo program was of great support in these difficult times. Hearing from and sharing my experience with others in similar situations around the world made me feel that we were approaching a huge problem together. I look forward to contributing to the scholarship program in the future as an alumnus, and I hope to see many more alumni flourish globally.
Stanford University Exchange Program
by Lili Yu 2020, this year has been engraved on my mind forever because of the COVID-19. Everything including my daily life and doctoral study in Japan changed suddenly and dramatically. However, the scholarship from the Friends of UTokyo, Inc. did really help me through the tough period by supporting me with better electronic devices and internet access to join global online lectures. As usual, the scholarship will be used for overseas short-period exchanges in high-level universities, which I planned before was Stanford University. COVID-19 results in the pandemic worldwide and I had to give up my original plan and turned to online lectures. However, it turns out to be a more productive and efficient way to broaden my research horizons and communicate with more leading scientists in my research field. My research is mainly about the mass and heat transfer in HAVC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) systems for Net-Zero-Energy buildings at system-scale, device-scale and material-scale. With the development of human life and society, the energy generation, consumption and related environmental problems have been hot issues for decades. The total energy demand will continue to increase up to 2060. In addition, there are around 20 to 30 years left before the world exceeds the CO2 emission budget to keep the global average temperature rise below 2 ˚C with a 50% probability as introduced in the Stanford Global Energy Dialogues. Therefore, we must take actions now to realize our NZE (net zero energy or emission) society. Moreover, 30% of the electricity consumed in buildings is used for space heating and cooling and over 50% of final electricity demand is consumed by the global building sector. Therefore, the improvement of HAVC is critical for the development of the NZE buildings. I am following two online lectures: the Stanford Global Energy Dialogues and MIT International Colloquia on Thermal Innovations. I can get a whole picture of the global energy innovations from different aspects including science, engineering, business, law, finance and human behavior to solve different energy challenges in history and now. For example, Chad Holliday in the Stanford Global Energy Dialogues mentioned that the greenhouse gas emission decreased about 17% after different levels of lockdowns in the world. However, the mass production of vaccines in the future will require new supply chains and factories, which will result in climate change. Therefore, the simple lockdown or carbon tax are not the appropriate ways to deal with the climate problems thoroughly. We need to try and develop step by step instead of ‘one size fits all’. As said by Chad Holliday, energy is the golden thread in the COVID-19 world. On the other hand, MIT International Colloquia on Thermal Innovations focuses more on novel techniques about energy conversion, storage, transport and utilization in details which stimulates new ideas for my research. I have been working on the optimization of air dehumidification systems by ANN and GA. Prof. Jiang pointed out that decentralized HAVC systems with improved devices and AI techs may be the future direction, which guides my thoughts for the optimization of HAVCs in building or larger scales. In addition to presentations of top scientists from all over the world, the online lectures also provide the opportunities to hear different voices and communications from students, faculty, post-docs, industry and government in the Q & A section. The most impressive lecture for me is Dry is the new cool: advanced dehumidification research for high performance cooling. As my Ph.D. topic is mainly about optimization of parameters for air dehumidification systems and the mass transfer in porous solid desiccants which are used for dehumidification. Therefore, this cutting-edge technology introduced by this lecture including moisture control for comfort & health, innovations in liquid and solid desiccant technology for HVAC and novel liquid desiccant-membrane dehumidification with integrated radiant cooling inspired me in my future research. Especially the research on dehumidification rate, which studied the limiting factor during the dehumidification process and showed that it actually changed with the adsorption time. The initial dehumidification is very fast but with the surface saturation increasing, the pressure difference between the bulk air and the particle surface is decreasing and it becomes the limiting factor. This shed a light on my recent experimental results of adsorption rate of a novel solid desiccant M. S. Gel. As I have mentioned before, this year is quite different, perhaps, for all people. Though I cannot join the exchange program in person and may miss more interesting campus life because of COVID-19, the online lectures turn out to be not bad. More choices of various lectures are provided this year and I can easily take what I want. COVID-19 leads to remote work and study, which actually shortens the distance among people on the internet. However, COVID-19 brings huge challenges to the world, and neither one country can escape that. We witnessed the lockdown and recovery of Hubei province. Chinese people united as one and got through the disaster. Japan also started lockdown later and I stayed home for about four months. My daily life is gradually returning to normal now. The period of staying home was anxiety and inconvenient, which makes me cherish our normal life. However, the COVID-19 can also be a moment to start our new life. The economic recovery after the pandemic will be an opportunity for us to try new patterns and society organizations. For example, remote work can be more popular and the development of the digital economy will be accelerated. Moreover, different policies will be implemented for economic recovery, such as the ‘go to travel’ and ‘go to eat’ campaigns in Japan. New jobs will be created during this recovery and we should be positive about our future but remember this lesson. There is a vaccine for the COVID-19 but no vaccine for our life and environment. We need to take action now for the future! Different solutions and attitudes of different countries to COVID-19 have been shown this year. We cannot require all countries to follow
Ito Foundation USA – FUTI Scholarship Degree Completion Report
by Yasuka Tateishi It was in May 2019 that I graduated from Yale University, and I recall the days in New Haven with great memories. I successfully completed the coursework and received an MA in International and Development Economics, but I cannot emphasize further how invaluable my experiences were above and beyond this degree. It is all thanks to the generous support from Ito Foundation USA and Friends of UTokyo that I was able to make the most of my graduate study. My research interest lies at the intersection of political science and economics. In particular, I am interested in uncovering the economic origins and consequences of civil wars in developing countries. After majoring in international relations as an undergraduate at the University of Tokyo, I obtained a master’s degree in development studies at the London School of Economics (LSE). Yet, I strongly felt the necessity in developing my skills in economics in order to better address the topic of my interest. This was how I became determined to pursue a second master’s degree in economics at Yale University and this scholarship helped me to undertake this endeavor. At Yale, I immersed myself in the coursework in economics and mathematics. I particularly enjoyed a course called “Economic Analysis of Conflict,” which exactly dealt with the subject I was interested in. The professor in charge was one of the few scholars who specializes in this research field, and I appreciate the opportunity for enrolling in his course. As a summary of the study, I wrote a paper that examined the causal effect of price shock on conflict events in Yemen. I did a presentation about this paper at the Japanese Association of Development Economics (JADE) last summer and the feedback and comments from Japanese scholars motivated me to further pursue this topic. I am now revising this paper to aim for publication in the near future. I also worked as a research assistant at Yale for a comparative project of gender and labor economics in Japan, the US, and Sweden. I assisted in launching original surveys and conducted analytical works for Japanese data. Through this experience, I was able to gain valuable insight into how professional research is designed and produced from its inception. We have recently published a journal article for this project, and I am honored to have been credited as a co-author. (https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/full/10.1162/daed_a_01781). After graduating from Yale, I started working as a consultant at the World Bank headquarters in Washington DC. My role is to conduct the poverty assessment of Guinea with household survey data, and I am taking the advantage of the analytical skills in economics I obtained at Yale. I am also enjoying the opportunities to use French that I intensively learned at college. It is challenging but extremely exciting to work here, as I had been pursuing a career of working for francophone African countries in international organizations. I could not have chosen this path without my experience at Yale. Moreover, some of my classmates from Yale are working in DC, including the World Bank, and it is my greatest pleasure to work alongside them here. Their passion towards international development is as great as mine, and they always inspire me with their knowledge and perspectives. Once again, I am grateful for the support from the scholarship that enabled me to take this path. Thank you very much.
Harvard Summer School
私は2019年度のハーバード・サマースクールに参加しました。7週間のコースで、授業は「Political Communication」「Political Economy of Russia and China」の2つを受講していました。前者はアメリカ政治とメディアの関係についての入門的な講義でしたが、メディアと政治の関係性に関する理論から勉強することができ、かつアメリカで重要なメディアのプラットフォーム（新聞、テレビ番組、Talk Radioからコメディ番組まで）の役割について網羅的に勉強することができて大変面白かったです。後者の授業はその名の通りロシアと中国の政治経済についての授業でした。普段東大でも中国政治について学んでいるので、中国に関してはあまり新しい知識はなかったのですが（笑）、ロシアについても中国と比較しつつ学ぶことができて有意義でした。また、アメリカの大学の政治系の授業はアメリカ人学生がほとんどなイメージでしたが、このクラスは非常に国際色豊かなのが嬉しかったです。アメリカ的な中国脅威論に染まることなく議論できたのが印象的でした。 普段からアメリカ政治は興味を持って情報を追っていましたが、やはり実際にアメリカに滞在して、政治に関する授業を受けるというのは得られる情報が桁違いに多くて面白かったです。特に、アメリカ大統領選の民主党候補のディベートが始まった頃でしたので、大学の一部の施設を使ってディベートの上映会をやっていたり、次の日の授業もその話題から始まったりと、リアルタイムで情報が追いやすかったです。というか、リアルタイムで追っていないと授業や友達の会話についていけないというプレッシャーもありましたが…。 ハーバード周辺は治安も良く、街も綺麗だし、大学の周りにお店もたくさんあって非常に住みやすかったです。ボストンまでも電車で3〜4駅で、出かけるところには困りませんでした。また、私は2年生の時にカリフォルニアに留学していたのですが、今回は東海岸に滞在してみて、西海岸と東海岸の雰囲気の違いを体感することもできました。ハーバードでは寮生活で、ルームメイトとはとても仲良くなることができたものの、寮に共有スペースがほとんどなかったため、2年時の留学と比べると友達を作るのは少し難しく感じました。ただ、そんな中でもダイニングで隣の人に話しかけられたり、同じ東大からのサマースクール参加者から交友関係が広がったりする中で、サマースクール後も連絡を取り合う友人ができたのは幸いです。 今回FUTI奨学金を頂いたおかげでハーバード・サマースクールに参加することができ、貴重な経験をすることができました。ご支援くださった方々には大変感謝しております。本当にありがとうございました。
Team N of the Molecular Recognition Lab
On February 26th, I was accepted to participate in the University of Tokyo Summer Internship Program (UTSIP) in the Kashiwa campus. As I reflect months later, I am beyond thankful to have been able to experience such an insightful and fulfilling internship with the Molecular Recognition Lab. Fast forward several months, on July 23rd, I ended my spring semester abroad at International Christian University (ICU) and departed with my two suitcases. The same two that I had since coming to Japan in January, though a bit more overflowing. I was filled with mixed emotions, some sadness from parting ways with my ICU friends, but mostly excitement for the next adventure to unfold. I arrived at Akihabara Station where I met Isa, a first-year Ph.D. student from Hong Kong and also one of my UTSIP tutors. After riding the Tsukuba Express to Kashiwa no Ha Station together, I took my first steps on the Kashiwa campus. After a couple days of orientation, another intern named Aika and I were warmly welcomed by the members of the Molecular Recognition Lab. We became part of the lab’s Team N, which was short for the Principle Investigator Nagata-sensei, and we partnered with our tutors Isa and Oka-san, a second-year Master’s student, to conduct a six-week long research project. Lab Experience My first day of lab was not what I expected it to be. Equipped with our nets and plastic containers, Aika, Isa, Oka-san, and I, along with another lab member Fujimori-san and Nagata-sensei, searched for bugs around campus. We caught over 60 bugs that would be used for Fujimori-san’s research, including rare earwings, elusive cicadas, and dangerous horseflies. I felt like I was living my childhood times of playing Pokémon. This was my first time ever catching insects, and as cliché as it sounds, this was an unforgettable experience. For the remaining six weeks, I conducted research about the metabolism of the two-spotted cricket, which is formally known as Gryllus bimaculatus. Collaborating with Aika, I attempted to confirm the presence of the gene DHCR24-1 in the two-spotted cricket. DHCR24 codes for an enzyme called 24-dehydrocholestrol reductase which facilitates the conversion of sterol intermediates (organic compound with four rings and a hydroxyl moiety) to cholesterol, which is a compound essential for cell structure and necessary for life. Since the overall goal was to elucidate its metabolic pathway for cholesterol production, we employed experimental techniques in molecular biology to control DHCR24 translation and chemical analysis to measure sterol levels. With greater understanding of DHCR24 in two-spotted crickets, it is possible to streamline the development of new drugs and pesticides. Coming to UTSIP, I felt sufficiently prepared to undertake the lab work at UTSIP. Rather, the biggest hurdle I faced was dealing with insects. During my first dissection in the first week, I extract all the parts we needed. Thankfully, weeks went by without having to handle crickets. Then by mid-program, to my dismay, I was told that I had to give injections to crickets as part of a technique called RNA interference which allows us to inhibit the translation of DHCR24. This meant I had to get used to catching and holding the crickets fast. To prepare, Aika and I were given a box that contained about 100 crickets and we had to practice injecting a harmless solution into the crickets. What made it difficult was in addition to dealing with a squirming insect that occasionally bit, we had to avoid puncturing any organs which could compromise the experiment while inserting the needle deep enough into the tissue. We also practiced dissections, spending a whole day on just seven crickets. By the end of the program, I (slightly) overcame my fear of insects and was able to successfully complete my experiments. Without the support of Isa, Oka-san, my other lab members, and Nagata-sensei, I would not have been able to accomplish as much as I did this summer. Getting to know Isa and Oka-san during our random adventures and weird conversations in Japanese and English was truly the best part of this experience. I am also thankful for all the other lab members for their support in passing down to me their knowledge. The final three outings were also a blast! UTSIP Programming Experience Aside from conducting research, the UTSIP staff also prepared several activities that immersed us into Japanese culture and enriched our learning. For the first couple days, we spent most of our time in orientation, occasionally doing ice breakers to get to know the other interns. Since every intern is assigned to their own lab, with exception to some that have two interns, seeing them is limited to during lunch breaks, at the end of the day, and on weekends. So, the extra programming really helped facilitate interaction. On the first day, we toured around the Hongo campus in inner Tokyo and Asakusa. We only had a few hours to soak everything in, so returning to see everything during our own free time was a must. We also experienced two Japanese language classes and a calligraphy lesson. The classes mainly targeted those who had little to no experience learning Japanese, at most covering grammar points from first-year Japanese. A Kabuki Play field trip was also part of the programming, but unfortunately, I caught a fever the day before and could not attend. Interestingly, on the second week, we partook in a two-day excursion to Mobara, Chiba. We learned about the Kasori Shellmounds, the largest shellmound in Japan, and their connection to the prehistoric Jomon Period. We also visited the facilities of Godo Shigen, a manufacturer of iodine from underground brine, and the Minami Kanto gas fields. Experiencing a “theme park” filled with historical buildings that mimicked those of the Edo Period and Meiji Era. We also had the opportunity to listen to four lectures of ongoing research on the Kashiwa campus. In contrast, we also had to prepare mid-program and final presentations about our research progress and conclusions. Thankfully, Isa, Oka-san, and
Research with Dr. Hiroaki Suga through UTRIP
by Max Sigal Thanks to the generous help of Friends of UTokyo, Inc., I had the opportunity to conduct research with Dr. Hiroaki Suga through University of Tokyo Research Internship Program (UTRIP) for 6 weeks. I am currently senior at Northwestern University studying organic chemistry and cell biology, and I research nanoparticle drug delivery with Dr. SonBinh Nguyen. Over the pasts few years, I have become interested in Japanese language and culture and have taken numerous classes to broaden my understanding of Japan; in my sophomore-to-junior year summer, I was lucky enough to participate in an 8-week intensive Japanese language program in Hakodate. During that program, I used my short vacation to visit the Suga lab for an afternoon since their research was related to my research. After that visit, I knew I wanted to conduct research in Japan. Thus, it was thus a happy coincidence when I found out later that year the Dr. Suga participated in the UTRIP program! The Suga lab specializes in modification of endogenous translation systems for discovery of biologically active macrocyclic peptides. As my current research is about drug delivery, I was extremely interested in drug discovery. My project was to find macrocyclic peptide binders for different protein isomers of Ubiquitin, a protein that is essential in post-translational modification of proteins. As my background was mostly chemistry, it was quite fun to finally use the many biochemical techniques that I’ve learned about in my classes, such as in vitro transcription/translation, genome sequencing, and more. By the end of my research, I was able to find 5 or 6 different candidate macrocyclic peptides that will be used for further experiments! While I had previously been to Japan for a more casual summer language experience, I had no idea what to expect from the culture of a serious internship. After arriving at the lab and nervously saying introductions in Japanese to some of the researchers, I was told that there was a welcome party being held for me later that night. I was even more surprised to learn that all forty or so people in the lab would be taking time out of their week to come and meet me. I quickly learned that this was the norm and not the exception. I constantly found myself surprised by the level of camaraderie and willingness to help someone they had just met a few weeks ago. I was constantly being invited to late-night dinners near campus or shown around Tokyo to places I didn’t even know existed. Whenever I have a question (which was quite often), everyone was always willing to take time out of their busy day to help me. Besides the research, I made some amazing friends during my time in Tokyo. We explored all over Tokyo and even took a weekend trip to Ueda and Nagano. I visited castles, a wasabi farm, and all kinds of shrines. I also spent my free time on weekends exploring different types of restaurants. My favorite by far was eating fancy sushi, something I had wanted to do last summer but did not have the money to do so. I was even served some complimentary sake! Because of all the excitement, this summer went by faster than I expected, but I’ll always be thankful for this opportunity and the support from FUTI for making this experience possible.
A Summer in Tokyo
by Jenny WangAugust 2019 This summer, I spent two months conducting research at the University of Tokyo’s International Research Center for Neuroscience (IRCN). I worked in the Hensch lab under Dr. Miyamoto, examining chloride ion dynamics in mice during their sleep and wake cycles. I really loved doing research at IRCN; everybody working there was very dedicated and enthusiastic about their respective projects, and there were many great opportunities and lovely outings organized by the IRCN staff, such as attending a Kabuki show, taking Japanese lessons, and seeing the Adachi fireworks. In general, the program was extremely organized and I made a lot of wonderful connections with researchers and staff there. In particular, I’m grateful that I got to work with Dr Miyamoto, who allowed me more independence in the lab than I’ve ever had before and was super fun to work with. He showed me his methods for conducting surgeries to inject chloride indicator virus into the mice brains and how to implant electroencephalogram (EEG) electrodes (to see sleep and wake cycles) and a fiber (to measure chloride levels via chloride photometry). With these instruments implanted, we were able to compare EEG and fiber photometry recordings to observe how chloride levels change during sleep and wake cycles — something that has never been done in vivo. Getting to work on a project that nobody else has before was super exciting, and also left a lot of room for me to figure out solutions to problems on my own, like how to analyze the fluorescence changes from chloride ion levels. I did not expect to become so familiar with Excel and Graphpad, but with guidance from Dr. Miyamoto I managed to figure it out. Data analysis is one of the most important parts of scientific research and I’m pleased I was able to learn it this summer. I was pleasantly surprised by how successful our data collection was (since we were trying out a completely new method), and as a result also got to be one of the first people to observe that chloride levels increase during the rapid-eye movement (REM) stage of sleep, which was really exciting! I similarly loved every moment spent living in Tokyo. IRCN did an amazing job with finding housing; the apartments at Elite Inn were always neat and comfortable, and the landlady was always present and responsive. Being on the Hongo campus of UTokyo and living in Bunkyo-ku made transportation and sightseeing very convenient. Pretty much every day I was able to either take a train or walk after work to see new sights, and I tried my best to make the most of it. I basically strolled and ate my way through all the big neighborhoods of Tokyo. (I will probably never be content eating sushi outside of Japan again, and will forever miss warm melon pan in Asakusa.) I was also very lucky to have other Harvard students around me who also enjoyed seeing and eating the city, and even made friends with Japanese students in Tokyo. I loved the more popular areas like Asakusa, Ueno (close to my Japan home), and Harajuku, but some of my favorites were less common areas like Shimokitazawa (which felt like a chill Harajuku) and Koenji (former punk rock district of Tokyo). I also loved getting out of the city once in a while– some of the most beautiful areas I went to were Nikko, Kamakura, and Yokohama. I enjoyed many of the museums around Tokyo as well, particularly TeamLab establishments and the Cup Noodle museum in Yokohama. What might have been my favorite experiences, though, were all the festivals around Tokyo: the lanterns, dancing, and street food were always high-energy and all the performers just exuded happiness. There were some lovely events near Asakusa, on Kagurazaka street, and near Yasukuni shrine that I went to over the course of the summer. Honestly, though, I think what I will miss most is the freedom I felt in Tokyo. Despite the rainy season and the following heat and humidity, I found the city extremely walkable (almost to a fault– there were a few times I decided to walk 5+ mile distances which, in hindsight, could have been traversed with much less sweat and effort). I just loved wandering gardens and peaceful streets, listening to music (in particular I discovered a love of Japanese alternative), and even if I got lost I knew I could always find a konbini or at least a vending machine. (Incidentally, there are also some really interesting vending machines around Tokyo, including an entire “creepy” corner of Akihabara dedicated to weird ones.) Though I did learn some Japanese phrases over the course of my stay, I wish I could have spoken to and had conversations with people or been able to read guides and various signage. It would have made many encounters much easier, and I think would have reduced my shyness about trying less well-documented experiences, like going to smaller restaurants or attending a concert. That being said, doing research on various Internet platforms (Yelp, TripAdvisor, Tabelog, YouTube, Google Maps) really enriched my experience in the city, as it helped me discover hidden corners of Tokyo (creepy vending machine corner) and steered me to locations that were perhaps more foreigner-friendly, or at least were used to English and Mandarin speakers. (I unexpectedly got to flex Mandarin Chinese in some places where people didn’t speak English.) Most importantly, as the summer progressed and I tried more new things I felt more and more comfortable going to new places and trying new things, and experienced an exciting, positive snowball of growing confidence. I am so grateful for my experience in Japan. I plan on spending the next few weeks happy-weeping over my pictures and videos from the summer (I have already made a sappy video montage set to music). Though I’m happy to be home and am excited about starting school, I already have a list of places I want to visit in