University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) was built in 1860s, California Gold Rush. UC Berkeley is one of the world's leading intellectual centers. It consists of 36 departments, accordong to National Research Council, 35 were judged to be in the top 10 in the nation. Five departments?Chemistry, English, German, Mathematics, and Statistics?were judged No. 1 in the nation. Another 16 departments were ranked 2nd or 3rd.

UC Berkeley's faculty of about 1600 is one of the most honored in the world. It includes eight Nobel laureates. Students choose from among approximately 7000 course offerings each year. UC Berkeley enrolls about 23800 undergraduate and 9300 graduate students each year. There are many kinds of race and nationality. I was impressed that there were many Asian students (especially Chinese) in the campus.

Visitor services provides information about the campus and conducts guided walking tours for individuals and groups. Our campus tour started at 10 am, and it was for 90 minutes. There were 20 people who joined campus tour. The 178 acre central campus is an urban oasis that preserves much of the tranquil beauty of California's early years. It is known for architectual and historical landmarks. The campus extends for another 1000 acres into surroundig hills and includes athletic fields. There are special parking places for Nobel laureates in the campus! It's incredible in Japan. And the symbol of UC Berkeley is bears, so there are many statues of bears in the campus.

During the campus tour, we entered the library. UC Berkeley's library system has one of the best research collections in the world and the facilities are sufficient. The 24 libraries on campus contain more than nine million books. Visiotors will find a model Tyrannosaurus rex skelton on display in the atrium hallway of the Valley Life Science Building.

Popularly known as the Campanile, Sather tower is the most recognized landmark of the University. The landscape from the top of the tower was very beautiful.

Sports, especially football is the most popular and UC Berkeley's students think Stanford as rival. The color of Berkeley is blue and Stanford's color is red. So, at the day of game, Berkeley's students with blue clothes go to the stadium for cheer. I was impressed that Berkeley's students really love their university.

(Masahiro SAMESHIMA, Astronomy)

More than 90% of American college students live on or near campuses. There are many kinds of housing such as dormitories, apartments, co-ops, and fraternities.

Most freshmen live in dormitories and this is the case for UC Berkeley, too. 95% of freshmen at UC Berkeley live in dormitories on campus. There are traditional dormitories that have shared bathrooms and there are semi-suites. Dormitories with shared bathrooms usually have rooms shared by two students and shared bathrooms on each floor. Semi-suites are newer and contain rooms shared by two or three students. Bathrooms are shared by three rooms. Semi-suites are popular and even sophomores tend to apply for them. A semi-suite room that we visit was a typical dorm room with a closet divided into three.

At UC Berkeley, there are dorm floors with Theme Project. These floors have themes such as Afro American and Political Science, and students who are interested in these topics can live together. To live in a Theme Project dorm, you have to write an essay and go through a difference process.

The dorm we visited had a lounge and a study room on each floor and a lounge with a TV, a exercising room, PC room, kitchen, and a stud room with tutors. The dorms seemed to be equipped so that students can live without stepping out of the dorm. The housing fee is about 15 hundred dollars including food expenses at dining halls.

After freshman, there are many options for housing. Apartments have rooms for each student and a living room, bathroom, and kitchen shared by four or five students. In co-ops, students share chores in a house. Fraternities and sororities each has its own selecting process.

Universities recommend students to live on campus. Universities are hoping that by leaving home and sharing room with a stranger, a student would develop not only academically but also mentally.

(Yukiko SAKAI, Biology, Zoologial Sciences)

In the midmorning of our 5th day at Berkeley, we visited Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL).

LBL was founded by Ernest O. Lawrence who invented world's first cyclotron. About 3800 people including 500 graduated students are working there and broad spectrum research such as physics, chemistry, life science are performed. LBL has turned out 10 Nobel scientists.

LBL stands on the hillside in back of UC Berkeley campus. We can see UC Berkeley campus, bay and San Francisco city from there, so we enjoyed beautiful landscapes in the bus setting to LBL. In the bus two graduate students of LBL spoke to us a brief description of history and people of LBL.

On arriving in LBL, we were introduced seminar room and Professor Hitoshi Murayama who is internationally known as his work in phenomenological cosmology gave us a talk about his cutting edge research in cosmology.

He talked about his turned on topic such as dark matter, dark energy in a comprehensible form, so we are all impressed even though some of us doesn't major physics or astronomy.

After that talk, we got on the bus again to move the building of Advanced Light Source and to see the synchrotron.

Fortunately, the day we visit LBL is the day the synchrotron is done maintenance and we could see the synchrotron.

In the building, there was a big cyclotron at one time and the pedestal of the cyclotron still resides at the center of the building. I felt the history of LBL which made lots of achievements in the nuclear physics and so on.

But in the USA, the budget of high energy physics is gradually cut and as shown in the building name "Advanced Light Source", the synchrotron built in the building is using as a light source for conformation analysis of material science, chemistry and life science. After we looked on the synchrotron, we had a lunch at refectory of the LBL with Dr. Nao Suzuki who graduated the Department of Astronomy of our university and is working as PD at the LBL. We talked with Dr. Suzuki about his research life, students in USA and his research.

Finally, we got on the bus to go back. Given an explanation of other buildings, we went down the hill and finished visiting LBL.

(Yusuke TSUKAMOTO, Astronomy)

On the day we arrived at Stanford University, we visited the laboratory of Prof. Yoshihisa Yamamoto, who teaches in the Department of Applied Physics. Prof. Yamamoto belonged to the NTT Basic Research Laboratories until visiting US in 1992, and is still active in the international project to investigate photonic quantum information systems. After lunch, Prof. Yamamoto explained the outline of current research.

Prof. Yamamoto has researched the Quantum Computation based on the quantum theory. This includes single-photon generation, photon detection, quantum cryptography, storage of photonic qubits, and linear-optical quantum information processing. In addition to the story about his research, he also told us the difference of research funds system in Japan and United States. I was surprised to hear that the income from the faculties occupies a quarter of the entire budgets at the Stanford University.

After visiting Prof. Yamamoto's laboratory, we attended the Campus Tour conducted by a senior student. According to his comment, Stanford University was founded by Mr. and Mrs. Stanford in 1891. It is named in honor of their only son, Leland Stanford, Jr., who died at the age of 15. The site area is as big as 8,000 acres, and there are about 14,000 students in this university. Stanford University has produced the nation's best and brightest including the 31st president, Herbert Hoover, and the Google co-founder, Larry Page.

In this Campus Tour, we looked around Hoover Tower, Memorial Court, Main Quad and Memorial Church. Many of the buildings are designed in a Southern-Californian style, with red tile roofs and white stucco exteriors, which gives the campus a uniform look. Science buildings in Stanford stand close to each other, which is completely different from that in the University of Tokyo; science buildings in our university are isolated. I felt the cooperation between various departments is easer in Stanford University. The barrier-free environment in Stanford is also remarkable. They have ramps and toilets for wheelchairs in each building. I think this consideration is one of the important things that we have to emulate.

Students in Stanford University live in dormitory, apartment, or house sharing, which are set in the university campus. There are some living accommodations especially for married students. The main transportation on campus is free shuttle buses and bikes. But some students have their own cars. This may be one character of the private university, which is completely different from both the University of Tokyo and UC Berkeley.

(Atsuko KINOSHITA, Biology, Plant Sciences)

Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) is one of federal laboratories at Stanford. Research on particle physics is performed with the two-mile linear accelerator. Research on material or biological science is also performed with the synchrotron radiation facility (SSRL, Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory). The experiments of SLAC have greatly contributed to the advancement of physics. Three Nobel Prizes in physics were awarded for the works at SLAC: “Charm: The 4th Quark” (1973), “Quarks Revealed: Structure Inside Protons and Neutrons” (1990), “Tau: The Third Electron-Like Particle” (1995). Many experiments such as the BaBar, the GLAST (Gamma Ray Large Area Spece Telescope), the LCLS (Linac Coherent Light Source) projects, etc. are currently in progress.

Professor Tuneyoshi Kamae, who had taught at University of Tokyo until five years ago, showed us around SLAC on March 8. The tour started in Panofsky Auditorium (W. Panofsly was the founder and the first director of SLAC). Professor Kamae explained to us about the general picture of SLAC. After that we moved to the showroom in the middle of the beamline of the linac.

The beamline itself is underground. The pipes for alignment and pumps are above the ground. A small part of beamline was shown in that showroom. We could see all two-mile long beamline in the room, which was magnificent.

After that we went onto a hilltop where we could look over SLAC and talked with Professor Kamae. We talked about graduate schools and research life in the United States. Professor Kamae courteously replied to each question which we asked.

After having lunch with Professor Kamae, Professor Hiroyasu Tajima, and graduate students, Professor Tajima explained about the GLAST experiment to us. They are constructing the GLAST Large Area Telescope (LAT) for the measurement of gamma rays with the energy of 0.01?100GeV. He showed us some detectors on the LAT in a cleam room. They are testing those detecors in SLAC. They are also testing them in CERN with high energy gamma rays from the accelerator.

(Shumpei NOJI, Physics)

This building was designed as a center for Bio-X program: A project to create a fused research on various academic field backgrounds such as Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Engineering and so on. This plan was presented in 1998 and the construction was completed in 2003. This building is located in the center of campus for Science, Engineering and Medicine. It is peculiar to this center that there are large rooms with no wall. There are two labs in each room and researchers are randomly allocated to desk. As a result, it often happens that people sit next to you are researcher in another laboratory. Room for PI is a box in the large room and seems like a show tent. There are 21 labs from several departments in the center. Their researches are extremely varied. For example, some people study signal transduction, others study localization of protein structure and others are developing robots. PIs designed this building to enhance communication and discussion among academic workers in different fields.

We visited Tobias Meyer's lab and Matthew Scott's lab in the second floor of the west tower. People in the former lab are screening genes involved in some cellular events using their human siRNA library. Owing to each researcher's interests, there were various projects ongoing individually. The subject of the latter lab is to clarify the role of transcriptional factors and proteins in signal transduction in developing of mouse's cerebellum. We looked around rooms for cell culture, fly breeding, con-focal microscope, two-photon microscope.

(Hidehiko INAGAKI, Biophysics and Biochemistry)

We had a meeting with students of UC Berkeley on March 4th, when we discussed the difference of universities and educational systems between Japan and the United States. First, four of us gave presentation, explaining higher education of Japan. It is summarized as the following;

• Japanese universities
• Entrance examination
• A faculty system of our university, semester
• Lectures
• Campus life, out of campus
• After graduation
• "Koza" system

After presentation, we started discussion. The following are the topics of the discussion;

• The difference of systems of universities between Japan and the US (single major vs. double major, time to determine one's major, “juken”, changing one's major, etc..)
• The difference of systems of graduate schools between Japan and the US (master course, Ph.D course, selecting a university of graduate school which is different from undergraduate one, etc..)
• The difference of entrance examinations between Japan and the US (SAT, GRE, Center exam, etc..)
• Tuition (difference between UC Berkeley and Stanford, difference between people from California and people from other places, etc..)
• The difference of courses after graduation between Japan and the US (lack of positions of P.D., studying at a graduate school after working for a company, possibility of working for a company after getting Ph.D, etc..)
• Other things (Japanese students of UCB, dormitory, dinner, etc..)

Thus we talked about so many things. Since we met the students of UCB for the first time on March 2nd, the first day of our short visit program, we have already been friends with them at the day of the meeting, which enabled us to enjoy discussion well. During the discussion, we found what we could never find until we talked directly to American students. Therefore we could spend so valuable and meaningful time with them.

(Naoto TSUJI, Physics)

On Educational System of Stanford

Stanford University is a private university of four year system. It was established as University for both men and women in 1891, and 7,054 university students (3,520 men and 3,534 women) goes to Stanford now. SAT and recommendations are large factors for the entrance admission, and there were 18,628 applicants and only 1,640 people was accepted for entry last year. Semester system is Quarter, and a lot of students go to school for three semesters in one year. Students must take about 150 courses to graduate. It is possible to select two majors or more. Tuition is 28,563 dollars, and 3,064 students receive Aid from the university.

On Housing for Students

Most of the university undergraduates live in university dormitory, and the graduates live in the nearby apartment. There are about 60 dormitories which are small houses, compared with skyscraperish dormitories in UCB. It costs about 9,000 dollars to live in the dormitory for one year. There is no kitchen, and they eat meals at café in the building like Coop that is called Student Union of the university.

On Academic Area

Academic area are roughly divided into three schools (cultural science, natural science, engineering, and Earth science), and the subjects with an especially large scale are Interdisciplinary Studies (10% of the all students), Computer Science (7%) Economic(9%), Biology(7%), International Relations(7%). Department of Medicine is a graduate school which is called Medical School. Furthermore, there are Sports major and Music major, and a lot of sports players and pianists graduate this department.

What We Discussed about

The discussion with 8 Stanford students were held at one room at NeuroBiology Department at 16:30 on the 8th. They are juniors,seniors and a 1st grade graduate, who major science. It started with introductions for ourselves, and we Japanese students had a presentation about Japanese higher education. After that, Stanford students asked us some questions about Tokyo University such as the cost of tuition, and the study time etc. We show the other questions from Stanford students below:

• How many Posdocs in Japan?
• How many are students who go to study to the university in the United States?
• Are there any differences between graduates and undergraduates in Japanese university?
• Are there any students who failed entrance examinations of graduate schools?
• What is the ratio of men to women in Tokyo University?
• Can you take music classes?
• Are there any famous Tokyo University students?

They concerned about Japanese educational system, especially Tokyo University system. Afterwards, we asked Stanford students about their educational system. We got to know; There are a master course of two years and a PhD course of five years at the Stanford university; There are three short vacations and one long summer vacation. It became a valuable discussion of talking directly about the difference between the opinions about education.

After Discussion

Two Stanford students Jerry Chi and John Hojun kindly mailed us and let me know about their opinion about Stanford educational system. Since they accepted to write here,I will introduce some of them.

Merits of Stanford university

• It is greatly admitted the freedom of expression. There are high quality of faculties and students. Educational system is flexible. There are enough budgets to research and study. Student has diversity. A lot of programs are prepared. There are a lot of circles.
• Almost all fields are recognized within 3rd place in the United States and those subjects should be able to be studied across them. Moreover, Stanford promotes big engineering program. Stanford locates near Silicon Valley. (They wrote that demerits are high tuition and high level of technicality.)

Going to study to Stanford university from abroad

• International students would have trouble with social life, because they don't know American culture well. Therefore, the advice for international students is to become open-minded socially and to be more aggressive in planning their academic schedule.

I am thankful to the Stanford students for their kindness.

(Koki TAKEDA, Mathematics)

Koki TAKEDA

Discussion with Prof. Jones about knot theory (3/3 13:00-14:30)

On the 3rd afternoon, I visited Prof. Jones office on 9th floor in Evans Hall and discussed about knot theory. I talked about some idea and he gave me some comment. What I talked about is application Wasan's theorem (like Tan'naka points) to an understanding for fundamental groups of some topology space. I thought there are some differences between explanations of Japanese math and U.S. math.

Penrose's Seminar at MSRI (3/6 15:00-16:30)

At 15:00 on the 6th, Sir Roger Penrose had a seminar about Twistor Theory in Simons Auditorium. The title was “Twistor Theory; old and new” and he explained about an abstract of the theory, which aimed unification of general relativity and quantum mechanics. In twistor theory, a point of space-time is a Riemann sphere in twistor space, and a wave function is an element of cohomology of twistor space. It seems to me that it gives clear geometrical view of Physics. Many people, over 50 had come to take his lecture. We can see this seminar through HP at MSRI. I and Noji sat and watched the seminar on the left side of the Hall.

Voevodsky's Lecture at 383N in Stanford Math Corner (3/9 14:30-16:00)

At 14:30 on the 9th, the Fields Medalist Vladimir Voevodsky had 4th seminar about “Homotopy Lamda Calculas” . Since I couldn't take part in three lectures before, I couldn't understand some symbols. But I understood that he applied the idea of Lamda calculus to modern topology. He jokingly said “we may check the proof for Poincare conjecture”. It seems very fresh and I was surprised his concept.

The Department of Mathematics, University of California at Berkeley and MSRI

The Department of Mathematics at Berkeley located on the top four floors of Evans Hall, which is near Sather Tower. (Other floors are occupied by Statistic Department and Economic Department. The three departments has common library on the 1st floor.) Within this building, regular faculty members, graduates and upper-division undergraduates study various kinds of mathematics every day. (Lower-division under graduate have mathematics class at the Dwinelle Hall.)

In 1981, Shin Shen Chern established an institute, Mathematical Science Research Institute which is called MSRI. For 15 minutes trip, we can visit MSRI by shuttle bus “H” which starts at Heart Mining Circle in front of Evans Hall. Fortunately MSRI built a new building “Chern Hall Building” on 1st March. We could participate a memorial seminar by R.Penrose. The Chern Building has two floors containing Simons Auditorium and Lecture Hall. On the wall of the building, we can see famous Penrose's aperiodic tiling. Common Room on the 1st floor is large and we can see beautiful sight of SanFrancisco. Lecture Hall on 2nd floor is very large and the partition is transparent glasses. Chern's bronze statue will appear soon.

The Department of Mathematics, Stanford University (3/7 17:00-18:30)

One of the buildings near Memorial Church is the mathematics department of Stanford University, which has five floors. The library is in the top floor and we can go out there to the terrace. The collection of books queues up according to the fields like topology, PDE, differential geometry,... etc. A lot of seminars are held at the Room 383N in the third floor. It was impressive to me that the blackboard of this room is red.

Shumpei NOJI

Professor Yasunori Nomura (3/3 14:00-)

• We interviewed Professor Nomura in person, who worked on theoretical particle physics at UC Berkeley and LBL.
• We talked about his research and life as a researcher.
• We made an inquiry to him about competitive research life, which had a sobering effect on me.

Sir Roger Penrose's Lecture at MSRI (3/6 15:00-16:30)

• I listened to Sir Roger Penrose's lecture ‘Twistor Theory, Old and New’ at Simons Auditorium in Chern Hall Building in MSRI (Mathematical Sciences Research Institute).
• You can download the video for that talk from http://www.msri.org/.
• The auditorium was full of the large audience.

Applied Physics/Physics Colloquim (3/7 16:15-)

• Most of those who belong to the department of physics and applied physics come to the colloqium. The lecture room was full of the audience.
• Ady Stern (Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel) gave a talk on ‘Quantum Twists and Slits: Unconventional “anyonic” statistics on the way from Theory-land to Experimental Demonstrations’.

Na Young Kim (Yamamoto Group) (3/7 17:00-)

• I met Na Young Kim, PhD course student in Yamamoto Group, whom Naoto Tsuji had had an appointment.
• She worked on carbon nanotube under the guidance of Professor Yoshihisa Yamamoto.
• She showed their laboratories to us.

Naoto TSUJI

Prof. Nomura (3/3 14:00-)

• Shumpei Noji and I had a meeting with Prof. Nomura on 3/3, who is studying elementary particle physics theoretically.
• We learned from the talk with him how enthusiastically particle physics theorists do research.

Particle Theory Physics Seminar (3/6 14:30-)

• I attended the seminar on 3/6. Its subject was spontaneous CP violation in the strong interactions and quark mass.
• The contents of the talk was highly specialized.
• The atmosphere was more comfortable, compared to Japanese one.

Classes: Introductory Physics (3/6 15:00-16:00)

• I attended the class of the undergraduate school.
• The subject was physical properties of AC circuits. They were analyzed using differential equations.
• The professor who lectured to the class made a big effort to make students understand his lecture.

Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium (3/7 16:15-)

• I participated in the colloquium on 3/7.
• The speaker of the colloquium was Ady Stern. The subject was ‘Quantum Twists and Slits: Unconventional “anyonic” statistics on the way from Theory-land to Experimental Demonstrations’.

Yamamoto Lab (NaYoung Kim) (3/7 17:00-)

• I visited Yamamoto Lab with Shumpei Noji and met one of the members of the lab, NaYoung Kim.
• I talked to her about what she was studying at the lab.
• She was doing experimental research on Carbon Nanotubes whose electric transport properties I had been studying theoretically, so I was very much interested in her research.

Shoucheng Zhang Lab (Xiaoliang Qi) (3/8 16:00-)

• I visited Shoucheng Zhang Lab on 3/8 and had a meeting with one of the members of the lab, Xiaoliang Qi.
• He explained his research about spin Hall effect to me.
• I also explained to him what I was studying in the undergraduate school.
• It was the first experience for me to discuss physical subjects deeply with foreign physicists. I was stimulated very much.

Yusuke TSUKAMOTO

Lecture for undergraduate: Introduction to the Information Technorogy (3/3)

• Introduction to the Information Technorogy.
• The lecture with Power Point in the large amphitherater.
• In spite of large class room, students often query to the professor.
• There are a lot of students who listen to the music and tamper the lap-top computer.

Dr. Hayashi Lab. (3/7 17:00-19:00)

• Summary of resarch: resarch of solar wind by MHD simulation. Fandamental resarch for space weather forecast.
• I asked Mr Hayashi actual condision of resarch about the sun, super computing for science, how to apply the graduate school of USA.
• Mr. Hayashi gave me good advices about my research in very concrete form.

Masahiro SAMESHIMA

Evan Levine (3/3 16:00-18:00)

• Abstract of his research:He is interested in the structure of the Milky Way Galaxy.
• Introduction of me,Explanation about my research for graduating undergraduate proram.
• I asked the system about the master course and doctor course.
• I asked the people of astronomy department (There are 40 graduate students. Including optics, infrared, radio).
• I asked the school life and the plan after graduating.
• I asked ATA and CARMA.

Melvyn Wright (3/6 15:00-17:00)

• Abstract of his research: Observation of the Hot Spots of Cygnus A at 230GHz, using the BIMA array. Observation of Sagittarius A at a wavelength of 1.3mm,using the BIMA array:Evidence of a Hot Turbulent Accretion Flow.
• Introduction of me, Explanation about my research for graduating undergraduate proram.
• Explanation about ATA and CARMA.
• More explanation about the correlator of ATA.
• Development scene of CARMA receiver.
• The future of radio astronomy lab (ALMA,SKA).

Hidehiko INAGAKI

A class for Undergraduate students “Introduction to the Science of Living Organisms” (3/3 12:00-13:00)

• A Lecture on introduction of taxonomy.
• As lectures in Japan, students got in and out of class freely. However, no students were sleeping. Most of them were taking notes seriously.
• Some students questioned to PI. It was surprise for me students listening to a iPod putted a question and PI reply it normally.

Kristin Scott's Lab (3/3, 14:00-16:00)

• They study on gustatory neurons of fruit fly, which seems to be simpler and easier to clarify than olfactory or visual system. They try to find out all the flow of information in neural circuit from input to output.
• First, I introduced about myself and my current project.
• Asked about their ongoing projects (Behavioral Assay on gustatory memory, functional imaging, screening of 2nd and 3rd order neuron, development of transsynaptic marker and so on).
• Questioned about some of their studies and articles (What is the merit of gustatory system? Strategy to screen 2nd,3rd order neuron and develop trans-synaptic marker)
• Putted a query about her educational policy in her lab and study abroad.
• Talked with graduate students about their research life as a researcher and future plans.

John Ngai's Lab (3/3, 16:00-16:30)

• They study on neuronal projection of Zebrafish's olfactory neurons, mechanism of ligand reception of olfactory receptors. They are also developing micro array for Zebrafish and utilize it for research on olfactory system.
• First, I introduced about myself and my current project.
• Putted a query about his educational policy in his lab and study abroad.

Jeremy Thorner's Lab (3/6 March)

• They study about several signal transductions in yeast. They are trying to start systems biological approach.
• Since PI delayed to come, we talked with some undergraduate, graduate students and PostDocs in the lab. We learned their researches, life as a researcher or students and future plans. I felt they have more options in every tuning point.
• Asked PI about his concept on systems biology.

Liqun Luo's Lab (3/7, 17:00-19:30)

• They study on neuronal projection of fruit fly's olfactory neurons by taking advantage of MARCM system they devised. They also devised the method of MADM.
• First, I introduced about myself and my current project.
• Putted a query about his educational policy in his lab and study abroad.
• Talked with some undergraduate, graduate students and PostDocs in the lab.

Tobias Meyer's Lab (3/8, 16:00-19:00)

• They are screening genes which are involved in some phenomenon in animal cells using their siRNA library.
• Since PI was out of campus, I talked with graduate students and PostDocs in the lab.

A class for graduate students “neuropathology” (3/9, 14:00-15:30)

It was the lecture on neuropathology. So discussion and lectures were mixed. PI made some conceptual questions such as “Is there any common mechanism underlying among neuropathology?”. Students did not take notes but have a think on the queries and answers to them.

Yukiko SAKAI

Lecture: Introduction to the Science of Living Organisms (3/3 12:00-13:00)

• The topics were similar to those in Introductory Biology courses open for freshmen at the University of Tokyo
• The class did not start on time
• Students asked questions frequently during the class
• There are not many students sleeping and most of them were taking notes on notebooks or on their laptop PCs.

Lecture: Computer Science (3/3 14:00-15:00)

• There were about 100 students.
• Many students were asking questions during the lecture
• There were not many students taking notes.

Jeremy Thorner Lab (3/6 14:00-18:30)

• The lab is using yeast to do researches on transmembrane and intracellular signal transduction mechanisms that are related to cell proliferation, cell division and gene expression.
• Self introduction
• A graduate student explained her research topic: the analysis on the role of scaffold protein, Ste5 in MAPK cascade.
• Discussion with undergraduate students, graduate students, and a post doc on their future plan and their lifestyles.
• Discussion with Prof. Thorner on his paper: system biology

Seminar: Frontiers in Biology (3/8 16:00-17:00)

• Presentation on the mechanisms of lineage transitions in muscle cells and aging
• There were about 200 people varying from undergraduate students to MDs.
• After the presentation, there were many students and MDs asking questions and it lasted for about half an hour.

Seminar: Molecular Biophysics (3/8 17:30-18:30)

• Presentation by a graduate student on his research topic: Anti Brownian Electrtokinetic Trap, trapping and manipulating a single molecule.
• It started with an introduction, how the system works, the result, an open question, and summary.
• The professor stopped him many times during the presentation asking questions.
• Many students that seemed to be not in the same lab were listening to the presentation.

Atsuko KINOSHITA

Sarah Hake's Lab (3/3 13:00-14:30)

• Research: Study about meristem function using Maize; Inflorescence architecture, the role of homeobox gene, and positional signaling in leaf development
• Self Introduction
• Learn Maize as a material of experiment, and current research in the lab
• Ask some questions about homeobox genes expressed in meristem
• Look around Plant Gene Expression Center
• Look around the greenhouse
• Ask some questions about PhD course and preparations to receive Post docs

Russell Jones's Lab (3/3 15:00-17:00)

• Research: Study about signal transduction in plant and program cell death. He will retire end of this school year.
• Self Introduction
• Learn the educational system in graduate program at UC Berkeley; Rotation, classes, and Qualification exam
• Ask about company's laboratory in US
• Look around the laboratory

Robert Fischer's Lab (3/6 14:00-16:00)

• Research: Study about the regulation of plant gene imprinting using Arabidopsis endosperm.
• Self Introduction
• Discussion with Prof. Fischer and learn outline of his research
• Discussion with Post doc and learn current research
• Talk with Japanese technician and know the life of students from Japan
• Talk with an undergraduate student about current study and future plans
• Talk with an undergraduate student from Indonesia about current study, future plans, and overseas education

Dominique Bergmann's Lab (3/7 17:00-19:00)

• Research: Study about asymmetric cell division, especially about stomatal formation. She started this laboratory only two years ago.
• Self Introduction
• Discussion with Dr. Bergmann and learn her current research
• Talk with Japanese Post doc about the difference of environment in Japan and US
• Look around the laboratory

Kathryn Barton's Lab (3/8 16:00-18:00)

• Research: Study about molecular biology of shoot apical meristem formation using various mutants of Arabidopsis thaliana
• Self Introduction
• Talk with Post doc about her current research
• Look around the greenhouse and Carnegie Institution
• Show me the latest SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope)