The Award Selection Committee met on March 14, 2015 at the Community Resource Exchange conference room in Downtown Manhattan. It was attended by Masaaki Yamada (Chair of the Committee and Director of University Relations), Hisashi Kobayashi, Shigenori Matsushita, Masako Osako, and Nobuko Sakurai. In a series of discussions that followed the preliminary selections made on March 14, the Committee has selected by April 27, seven UTokyo students and 11 U.S. students for this summer’s scholarship program.
Due to UTokyo’s change to the four-quarter system this year, the applications from the University declined significantly this year. As a result, the number of UTokyo award recipients this year has dropped sizably from 13 last year. It is expected that the UTokyo applications will return to normal levels going forward.
Four out of the selected seven UTokyo students will participate in various summer programs at U.S. universities, such as Princeton University, University of Michigan, University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University, while two will attend English language courses at Yale University or U.C. Berkeley, and one will participate in the Global Summer Program (GSP) at Yale. Four are science & engineering majors, while three are humanities and social science majors. Four are undergraduates (three Sophomores, one Senior), and three are graduate students (one M1, two M2).
Seven out of the 11 U.S. awardees will conduct research as summer interns at UTokyo’s laboratories. Five of these recipients will participate in the University of Tokyo Research Internship Program (UTRIP), which is hosted by professors in the School of Sciences at UTokyo. Two are going to participate in the University of Tokyo Internship Program in Kashiwa (UTSIP-Kashiwa) hosted by the Graduate School of Frontier Sciences (http://www.ilo.k.u-tokyo.ac.jp/summer_en.) In addition, two MIT and one Princeton students will take internships at UTokyo science laboratories. The selection process for FUTI awards was highly competitive. For instance, the four UTRIP participants have been selected from over 40 U.S. undergraduates, many of whom were top students from leading universities in the U.S.
In addition to these internship students, two Yale students (both Sophomores) have been selected to participate in the Global Summer Program (GSP) courses offered by UTokyo.
The FUTI summer scholarship award, a.k.a. the “FUTI Global Leadership Award (FUTI-GLA),” is designed to nurture future global leaders of Japan and the U.S. One of the selection criteria is a demonstration of leadership quality.
List of Scholarship Recipients
English Language Training Courses (2 UTokyo Students)
- Takato Masuda (Law School, 2nd Year): Yale University English Language Institute, English for Law
- Haruaki Tamura (Engineering, Master 1st): U.C. Berkeley Summer English Language Studies
Non-Language Training Courses at US Universities (4 UTokyo Students)
- Fahd Khan (Chemistry, Masters 1st): Princeton Research Collaborators Program, Princeton University
- Tokuyou Li (Science I, sophomore): U.C. Berkeley Regular Summer Session
- Sayumi Miyano (Law and Politics, Senior): Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), University of Michigan
- Daichi Tsuna (Science II, Sophomore): Stanford Summer International Honors Program, Stanford University
GSP at Yale University (1 UTokyo student)
- Hiroya Sato (Economics, Sophomore): “Moral Foundations of Politics”
UTRIP at UTokyo (5 U.S. students)
- Susanna Elledge (U.C. Berkeley, Chemistry, Chemical Biology, Junior): Professor Takeaki Ozawa
- Elbegduuren Erdenee (Princeton University, Molecular Biology/Neuroscience, Sophomore): Professor Takeaki Ozawa
- Yuka Esashi (Reed College, Physics, Sophomore): Professor Kazuki Koketsu
- Hsu (Indy) Liu (Reed College, Physics, Third Year): Professor Hirofumi Sakai
- Kenneth Wu (U.C. Berkeley, Nutritional Science and Toxicology, Sophomore): Professor Shu Kobayashi
UTSIP Kashiwa Program at UTokyo (2 U.S. students)
- Masahiro Nakanishi (Brown University, Science, Applied Math and Economics, Sophomore)
- Maki Tohmon (Pomona College, Biology, Sophomore)
GSP Program at UTokyo (2 Yale students)
- Claudia See (Biomedical Engineering, Sophomore): Nanoscience
- Carolyn Zhang (Electrical Engineering, Sophomore): Nanoscience
MISTI Program at UTokyo (2 MIT students)
- Qiaochu Li (Material Science and Engineering, Ph.D. program 1st Year): Professor Takuzo Aida
- Krithika Swaminathan (Mechanical Engineering, Sophomore): Professor Yoshihiko Nakamura
