NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
TOKYO REGIONAL OFFICE
The National Science Foundation's Tokyo Regional Office periodically reports on developments in Japan that are related to the Foundation's mission. It also provides occasional reports on developments in other East Asian countries.
Tokyo Office Report Memoranda are intended to provide information for the use of NSF program officers and policy makers; they are not statements of NSF policy.
Selected Research Experiences of US Graduate Students in Japan: Summer 2001
Fifty-nine U.S. science and engineering graduate students conducted research at a variety of facilities in Japan during the summer of 2001 under two programs co-sponsored by NSF and the Japanese Ministry or Education and Science (Monbukagakusho): the Summer Institute Program and the Monbukagakusho Research Experience Program for Young Foreign Researchers (see Tokyo Report Memoranda #01-08 and #01-09, dated August 7, 2001). During August 2001, William Blanpied, Director of NSF's Tokyo Regional Office, visited several of these students at their host institutions, and had the opportunity to meet most of their Japanese hosts. This report summarizes his impressions of those meetings. Questions about the research conducted by these students should be addressed to the students themselves .
Information about summer programs in Japan during the summer of 2002, as well as other international opportunities for US graduate students in Japan and East Asia, can be found on http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/int/eap/gradstud.htm.
Visit in Kobe
Kobe University. Ms. Nicole Guthrie, a Masters Degree candidate in nutrition at the University of California, Davis, conducted her research project under the guidance of Professor Hitoshi Ashida, of the Kobe University Faculty of Agriculture (http://www.ans.kobe-u.ac.jp/indexe.html). Since this research was related to, but different from the work she had been involved with at Davis, Ms. Guthrie's summer experience enabled her to broaden her understanding of research techniques in her field of interest. At Davis, Ms. Guthrie had participated in a major epidemiological study on the effects of soy phytoestrogens on risk factors for cardiovascular disease. At Kobe, she engaged in a study using rats to determine the effects of several green tea extracts on type 2 diabetes. Professor Ashida informed me that he intends to include Ms. Guthrie's research results in a paper he plans to prepare for publication, with her name appearing as a co-author.
Ms. Guthrie informed me that her research experience under Professor Ashida's guidance would be instrumental in determining whether or not to pursue a Ph.D. program, and in what specific areas. She can be reached at nlguthrie@ucdavis.edu.
Visits in Osaka
National Museum of Ethnology. Two US graduate students carried out their summer activities at the National Museum of Ethnology (http://www.minpaku.ac.jp/english): Ms. Terri Anderson and Ms. Mackenzie Massman, both from the George Washington University. Ms. Anderson and Ms. Massman were on a field trip visiting other museums in Kyushu during my visit. However their host, Dr. Tsuneyuki Morita, Director of the Department of Research Development, gave me a brief description of the work they had been carrying out, as well as an overview of the research activities of the museum more broadly. He also took me on a tour of the museum's extensive, well displayed collections from all parts of the world, including a special “hands on” section intended for children.
The National Museum of Ethnography has the status of an inter-university center, which enables it to accept Ph.D. degree candidates. Approximately six students are accepted into its Ph.D. program each year, which usually requires four and a half years to complete, including at least a year and a half of field work. Both of NSF's summer students are specializing in museology (i.e., the technical aspects of museums) rather than in ethnology, per se. At Osaka, Ms. Anderson was engaged in a project related to the preservation and conservation of artifacts. Ms. Massman was engaged in a project to apply computer technology to the work of the museum. Dr. Morita was somewhat vague about the details of her work, noting simply that had spent a good deal of time with the museum's computer experts, who seemed to value her contributions. Ms. Anderson and Ms. Massman can be reached at terria@gwu.edu and mackenzie_massman@hotmail.com or kenzie@gwu.edu, respectively.
Dr. Morita informed me that he had organized and overseen a special five-month course in museology for 30 individuals from museums in developing countries in Asia and Africa. These students arrived on July 31. The opportunity afforded Ms. Anderson and Ms. Waxman to become acquainted (though only briefly) with experts in their field from other countries in addition to Japan was a decided, unanticipated fringe benefit of their summer experience in Japan.
Osaka University, Graduate School of Science, Department of Mathematics. Winston Chih-Wei Ou was awarded his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Chicago in the spring of 2001 and began a three-year postdoctoral appointment at the University of Indiana in September. His summer in Japan provided him with a welcome opportunity to study, at leisure, new aspects of his research specialty (classical harmonic analysis) under the guidance of Professor Michihiro Nagase in the Department of Mathematics in Osaka University's Graduate School of Science (http://www.math.sci.osaka-u.ac.jp). Dr. Ou did not carry out a discrete research project. Rather, he explored broader aspects of his specialty through consultations and discussions with mathematicians at Osaka University and other academic institutions in the Kansai region. Prof. Nagase's principal and much valued contribution was to put him in touch with a wide variety of professionally interesting people, including several younger mathematicians. Many of them visited Dr. Ou to learn about aspects of his own work. Indeed, Professor Nagase arranged to have Dr. Ou give two seminar presentations during the time he was in Osaka. Dr. Ou is convinced that his summer interlude was professionally valuable in allowing him to contemplate, at relative leisure, research directions he might profitably pursue in the future.
Professor Nagase informed me that he is in communication with mathematicians throughout Japan and in several other countries, including the United States. He would like to build on these largely informal relations to develop a large-scale collaborative project. He now counts Dr. Ou as among his circle of potential collaborators and hopes that he will maintain close professional relations with him in the future. Dr. Ou can be reached at: wcwou@math.uchicago.edu
Visits in Kyoto
Kyoto University, Division of Earthquake Disaster Mitigation, Disaster Prevention Research Institute. Ms. Janise Rodgers, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Berkeley and Mr. Forrest Masters, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Florida, conducted their research as part of a larger group under the guidance of Professor Masayoshi Nakashima of Kyoto University's Disaster Prevention Research Institute (http://www.dpri.kyoto-u.ac.jp). At Berkeley, Ms. Rodgers had been involved in earthquake engineering research in which she examined the seismic effects on multistoried, idealized structures in which walls fastened together with different types of couplings. At Florida, Mr. Masters had been involved in research on the real-time effects of hurricanes on residential structures. Both students had completed three years of their Ph.D. programs at the time they came to Japan, and informed me that they would identify their dissertation topics during the coming year.
At Kyoto, these two students joined a research group headed by Professor Nakashima that is using experimental facilities at the university's Uji campus to investigate seismic effects on idealized residential structures. Traditional residential structures frequently are highly vulnerable to earthquakes in Japan. During the 1995 Kobe earthquake, for example, almost 90 percent of all fatalities occurred in such dwellings. But retrofitting traditional one-family residences to make them more earthquake resistant is very expensive. Professor Nakashima is exploring an alternative approach (which Mr. Masters described as being “outside the box”) in which idealized traditional one-family residences are retrofitted by joining several of them together using various types of couplings, thus improving the earthquake resistance characteristics of an entire block of residences.
Ms. Rodgers believes that her summer experience conducting research related to yet quite different from what she has conducted in the past will be useful in selecting a dissertation topic. Mr. Masters hopes to conduct his dissertation research (and pursue a subsequent career) in a broadly-based area that is not necessarily restricted to any one specific type of natural disaster. He believes that the introduction to earthquake studies he obtained at Kyoto, added to his experience with wind-related disasters at his home institution, will be valuable in selecting a dissertation research topic consistent with his career goals. Ms. Rodgers and Mr. Masters can be reached at jrodgers@ce.berkeley.edu and phorrest@ufl.edu, respectively.
Kyoto University, Department of Environmental Information Processing, Division of Human and Environmental Studies. Ms. Kate Syfert and Mr. John Rock, both from the State University of New York at Buffalo, are conducting a joint research project under the guidance of Professor Masaaki Yamanashi of Kyoto University’s Division of Human and Environmental Studies (http://www.adm.kyoto-u.ac.jp/jinkan/main_e.html). Ms. Syfert is pursuing her graduate studies in anthropology, Mr. Rock in philosophy. Both have completed two years of study towards their Ph.D.'s and have been working together at SUNY/Buffalo in an NSF-supported IGERT program centered on geography.
At Kyoto, Ms. Syfert and Mr. Rock conducted a project which sought to identify varying ways in which individuals ask for, and provide, geographical information in the very practical form of local directions. They described the process of asking for and receiving directions as a two-way collaboration. From that perspective, such a seemingly straightforward transaction may have significant cultural determinants. Both students admitted that they had been far too ambitious in planning their research agenda before coming to Japan. Still, they believed they had accomplished a good deal during their time here in defining the specifics of their project. Evidently Professor Yamanashi was pleased with their progress, since he arranged to have them continue their collaboration with his group via the Internet following their return to SUNY/Buffalo.
Both students are convinced that the research the research that they conducted in Japan will help them define the topics they will pursue for their Ph.D. dissertations. This will require that they return to Japan for a year or more. Professor Yamanashi has assured them that they will be welcome in Kyoto. Dissertation enhancement awards from NSF would enable them to accept his invitation. Ms. Syfert and Mr. Rock can be reached at kmsyfert@acsu.buffalo.edu and johnrock@acsu.buffalo.edu, respectively.
Visits in Tsukuba
Geographical Survey Institute, Space Geodesy Research Division. Mr. David Phillips, a Ph.D. student in Geography at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, carried out his summer activities at the Geographical Survey Institute under the guidance of Dr. Shigeru Matsuzaka (http://www.gsi.go.jp/ENGLISH). Mr. Phillips' research at his home university involves space geodesy and vulcanology studies in the South Pacific, topics that are also of interest to Dr. Matsuzaka. Since Dr. Matsuzaka has been exchanging data with Mr. Phillips' adviser in Manoa for several years, Mr. Phillips was able to join in and contribute to the ongoing research at Tsukuba with relative ease. Dr. Matsuzaka also made arrangements for him to visit research sites and facilities in his area of interest in Hokkaido as well as at Tokyo University. These visits enabled Mr. Phillips to meet people in his field who have and/or are obtaining data complementary to his, suggesting possibilities for exchange. For example, at Tokyo University Mr. Phillips met a researcher who is working on space geodesy studies of New Guinea–a South Pacific location for which Mr. Phillips previously had no data.
Mr. Phillips believes that the principal professional benefits of his summer experience was to work with scientists who are conducting research in his areas of interest at the Geographical Survey Institute, and to meet and exchange views with scientists working in closely related areas elsewhere in Japan. He feels that his professional perspectives were thereby broadened so that henceforth in planning any research project he will undertake, the benefits of collaboration with Japanese colleagues will be taken as a given. Mr. Phillips can be reached at: dap@soest.hawaii.edu
Research Institute of Biological Resources, Microbial and Genetic Resources Research Group[1]. Ms. Teresa Leonardo, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Davis, conducted her research under the direction of Dr. Takema Fukatsu of the Research Institute of Biological Resources
(http://www.aist.go.jp/aist_e/ressearch_units/research_section/biores/biores_main.html). The research carried out by Dr. Fukatsu's group aims to illuminate symbioses between insects and bacteria. According to Ms. Leonardo, his is one of the two leading research groups in this field in the world. Her Ph.D. research at Davis involves the effects of various bacteria on aphids. She informed me that she was the only scientist in her Davis laboratory who has been pursuing the particular detailed line of research in which she has been engaged. In contrast, there are several people involved in her line of research in Dr. Fukatsu's laboratory. So one immediate benefit of Ms. Leonardo's summer experience was to allow her to exchange information with people who understand and appreciate what she has been involved with for the past two years. Another benefit was the opportunity to learn new laboratory techniques which, she informed me, are really state-of-the art techniques developed by Dr. Fukatsu and his coworkers.
Ms. Leonardo met Dr. Fukatsu at an international conference in Greece a little over a year prior to here arrival in Japan. On that occasion he invited her to visit his laboratory if she could find resources to do so. She was able to accept his invitation, courtesy of NSF's summer programs in Japan. Ms. Leonardo can be reached at teleonardo@ucdavis.edu.
Nanoarchitectonics Research Center, High Interface Area Nanostructure Research Team. Mr. William Nichols, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, conducted his summer research under the direction of Dr. Takeshi Sasaki at the Nanoarchitectonics Research Center
(http://www.aist.go.jp/aist_e/ressearch_units/research_center/narc/narc_main.html). The essence of Mr. Nichols' research at Austin is to determine and characterize the opto-electronic properties of nanostructure composites consisting of nanometer crystals (produced by laser ablation) sandwiched between layers of thin films. The apparatus required to produce these composites is in great demand in Austin so that he is obliged to hand the raw materials to a technician, along with instructions, and then get back the finished composite in perhaps a day. After that he can begin to measure the newly produced sample for the characteristics that interest him. But at Tsukuba, the apparatus Mr. Nichols requires is available in Dr. Sasaki's laboratory so that he was able to produce several samples with varying characteristics each day. Equally important, he could do this work himself rather than having to rely on a technician. Thus, not only did his research progressing rapidly but, in addition, he had the opportunity to get his hands on the apparatus required to produce the nanostructure composites he studied.
Mr. Nichols is convinced that in order to complete his dissertation research, it will be advantageous to return to Dr. Sasaki's laboratory and make use of the unique apparatus available there. He hopes that a dissertation enhancement grant from NSF will permit him to return. Dr. Sasaki hopes that that will be possible.
Dr. Sasaki first met Mr. Nichols' thesis adviser at an NSF-JSPS funded seminar on nanostructures held in Tsukuba in 1996. He has remained in communication with him (as well as with other American researchers whom he met on that occasion), and has visited Austin during the past two years. One result of that visit was Mr. Nichols' adviser's suggestion that he apply to NSF as a summer program participants so that he could work for a few weeks in Dr. Sasaki's laboratory. Mr. Nichols can be reached at wnichols@mail.utexas.edu
National Institute for Land and Infrastructure Management, Construction Management Division. Mr. Morris Green, Jr., who is a candidate for a double Masters Degree (in Industrial Engineering and Urban Planning) at the State University of New York at Buffalo, worked at the National Institute for Land and Infrastructure Management under the direction of Dr. Shinji Yamaguchi (http://www.nilim.go.jp/english/eindex.htm). He was involved in a field that Dr. Yamaguchi and his colleagues refer to as value engineering–that is, how to minimize the costs, while ensuring adequate quality control, by optimizing all steps in major public works construction projects. During the summer, Mr. Green compared Japanese and US practices in value management, with the expectation that such a critical comparison would help the Japanese improve theirs.
Several field trips were arranged for Mr. Green. The most notable were a visit to a tunnel being constructed in Tokyo as an extension of an existing subway line which also includes electric transmission cables and water pipes, and a visit to a Toyota assembly plant which provided him with insights into the ways in which private industry deals with value engineering. The short term benefit of the summer, according to Mr. Green, was to help him bridge the gap between the two areas in which he is studying for his masters degrees: industrial engineering and urban planning. Beyond this short-term benefit, he has gained perspectives that will be valuable as he examines career options beyond his current studies. Mr. Green is uncertain about whether he wants to pursue a Ph.D. degree. But he is entirely certain that he wants to return to the National Institute for Land and Infrastructure Management. Dr. Yamaguchi assured me that he would be more than welcome. Mr. Green can be reached at mgreen@acsu.buffalo.edu.
Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences, Fisheries Division. Mr. Andrew Wigginton, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Kentucky, conducted his research at the Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS) under the direction of Dr. Marcy Wilder (http://ss.jircas.affrc.go.jp/). Dr. Wilder and her associates (including a visiting scientist from China, from Malaysia, and from Korea) have been conducting a number of related research projects aimed at elucidating reproduction and molting of a species of Japanese fresh water prawn. One line of research she has been contemplating has to do with the uptake and processing of calcium by these prawns over their life cycle from larvae to adult, and with the ways that calcium is involved in their annual molting process. She took advantage of Mr. Wigginton's presence in her laboratory to conduct feasibility studies for this research. At Kentucky, Mr. Wigginton has been investigating the impacts of various pollutants on calcium-related processes in crayfish so that his experience is closely related to the research he conducted under Dr. Wilder's guidance. Much of this research involved measuring the chemical compositions of cross sections of discarded shells of molting prawns, primarily to determine the localization of calcium and carbon compounds. The instrument he used for this work is an electron microscope that carries out chemical analyses simultaneously. One obvious benefit that Mr. Wigginton’s derived from summer experience was to learn a new experimental technique that he believes he could definitely apply to his studies with crayfish. However, he does not know whether this instrument (which Dr. Wilder says is quite new, as well as quite expensive) is available at the University of Kentucky.
Dr. Wilder has had a unique career. She first came to Japan on an orchestra tour when she was an undergraduate at Harvard, and fell in love with the country. Later, having studied Japanese at Harvard for two years, she returned to Japan and successfully completed the requirements for her Ph.D. at the University of Tokyo, after which she obtained an appointment (by now tenured) at JIRCAS. She was recently recognized for her research by the Japanese Society of Women in Science.
Dr. Wilder was very pleased with Wigginton's feasibility studies, which have encouraged her to pursue a full-scale research project along the lines he has initiated. Mr. Wigginton can be reached at rumicworld@aol.com.
National Institute for Environmental Studies, Center for Global Environmental Research. Ms. Olga Zyrina, who was awarded her Masters Degree in Forest Management from Oregon State University during the spring of 2001, is carried out her research at the National Institute for Environmental Studies under the guidance of Dr. Yoshiki Yamagata (http://www.nies.go.jp/). Dr. Yamagata and his group are involved in several related studies on carbon sequestration, particularly by forests. At Oregon State, Ms. Zyrina conducted in situ, ground-level research of carbon sequestration by forests, one objective being to determine the economic impacts of various alternative sequestration scenarios. At Tsukuba, she examined Landsat images of a section of Southern Hokkaido to determine the extent to which such images can be used to monitor changes in carbon sequestration. The region she examined is quite mountainous which, apparently, creates special problems in the interpretation of Landsat data. She believed she had made sufficient progress by the end of the summer to permit a newly-arrived Australian scholar to make rapid progress after her departure.
According to Ms. Zyrina, Dr. Yamagata is one of the world's leading experts in the use of Landsat data to examine the properties of forests, and she is gratified to have been able to work with him this summer. She believes that the experience she gained with satellite imagery will be a useful addition to her resume when she looks for a job, which she stated would be her first priority after her return to Oregon. Prior to leaving Japan and following the end of her summer research in Tsukuba, she took a two week trip to Hokkaido, where she had the experience of actually being in the forest that she had been studying for several weeks by satellite imagery. Ms. Zyrina can be reached at olga.zyrina@orst.edu
Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, Department of Forest Site Environment. Mr. Mikhail Yatskov–who is Ms. Zyrina's husband–received his Masters Degree in Ecology from Oregon State University in the spring of 2001, and worked during the summer at the Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute under the direction of Dr. Masamichi Takahashi (http://ss.ffpri.affrc.go.jp-available in Japanese only). Mr. Yatskov's had conducted field studies for three summers in Siberian forests to obtain data on carbon sequestration by dead matter on the ground. While in Japan his primary activity was to make field trips for the purpose of gathering carbon sequestration data in forests, including both their trees and their soils. The Tsukuba-branch of the Forest and Forest Products Research Institute is the principal research facility among five facilities in Japan. During the summer his host, Dr. Takahashi, arranged for Mr. Yatskov to visit two of the remaining four facilities: one in the Kansai (Kyoto), the other in the Tohoku (Morioka). On both occasions Mr. Yatskov conducted field work, and also found time to present seminars about his research at Oregon State. He also had an opportunity to visit the Hokkaido facility following the end of the summer program on August 23rd. Mr. Yatskov can be reached at mikhail.yatskov@orst.edu