Two Japanese students will be sent to Sweden to attend the Nobel Prize ceremony to be held next Tuesday.
As part of the Nobel Foundation-supported international exchange program designed for young scientists, the two are also scheduled to attend ceremonies where Asahi Kasei Corp. honorary fellow Akira Yoshino will receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The students said they hoped to make use of this "once-in-a-lifetime" opportunity in their future research lives.
The exchange program invites students from around the world every year so they can interact with each other and participate in awards ceremonies and banquets.
The Japan Prize Foundation selects students from Japan to join the program. This year, the students chosen were Fumika Moriya, a graduate student at the University of Tokyo, and Taiyo Ishikawa, a graduate student at Hiroshima University.
Moriya's grandmother is suffering from Parkinson's disease. She is currently studying the functions of the hippocampus, a part of the brain that is involved in memory and learning, hoping to "help people suffering from brain diseases."
Moriya plans to take a doctoral course but has not decided whether to continue on at the university or get a job as a corporate researcher. If she has the opportunity to meet Yoshino, Moriya said she wants to ask him why he chose the career path of joining a company to pursue research. She said she will wear a kimono to the ceremony and give her beloved grandmother a photograph of her at the event.
Ishikawa majors in traffic engineering, studying how to improve transportation infrastructure such as railways and buses in urban areas in developing countries. He said he looks forward to discussions with local high school students in Sweden.
"I want to learn how Nobel winners approach their research," Ishikawa said.
Read more from The Japan News at https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/
