Activity Reports
Back to Your Future
Student essays from the 2025 WISE FoPM Graduate Program Course “Scientific Writing, Publication, and Communication”
If only you knew a little bit of what you know now back when you were a junior high-school student… Would you have done anything differently? Would it have made your journey easier?
In this course, graduate students in the sciences at the University of Tokyo wrote essays to advise their 12-year-old selves and inspire other junior high-school students to follow the path towards science. They explain their current research, why they find it interesting, and give themselves some useful advice based on the experience and wisdom that they have gained in the years since they were 12. Their writing was refined by an innovative open science peer review process under the tutelage of instructors Dr. Kate Harris and Prof. Mark Vagins. Please enjoy exploring and reading them.
KATAYAMA Koya
Dear 12-Year-Old Me: Broad Interests Leads to Broad Opportunities
SASAMORI Kansuke
It All Starts with a Baby Egg Cell
TAGAMI Risako
Unlocking the Secrets of the Universe with Tiny Particles
MAKI Kazuma
Supersymmetry – The Universe’s “Secret Seasoning”
MORI Masahito
How do living organisms acquire their own patterns?
KODAMA Emon
The universe is full of explosions
AKAZAWA Koumei
Inside Tiny Clusters: Where Do Electrons Live?
KOBAYASHI Yuhi
Drug discovery from natural product chemistry
SAKOI Kenryo
Light up the protein, light up the world
WERNER Jacob Brandon
How does measuring affect the arrow of time?
ZHU Yikai
Ripples in Space: How Quantum Wiggles Grew into the Cosmic Web
LU Pucheng
When Solar Particles Kiss Venus: A Future Scientist’s Cosmic Guide
ARIHARA Manaki
Quantum Computers: The Next Big/Little Thing
IEYASU Shotaro
Tiny Particles, Big Questions: My Journey into the Universe’s Deepest Secrets
IYAMA Naoki
The secret of Neural Networks: A Physics Perspective
UMEKAWA Shun
Foundations of Quantum Theory: Seeking what kind of theory nature obey
KAWAHIGASHI Rinko
Don’t you want to see the edge of the world?
KITAGAWA Haruto
Journey Through the Story of the Universe
KURODA Koki
A lot can happen in a femtosecond
KONDO Keigo
Mysterious Heartbeats from Supermassive Black Holes
SAITO Haruki
Do computers dream of the microscopic world?
SHIBAI Subaru
How to make the most isolated object to see the beginning of Universe
SHIMOMURA Mutsumi
What Truly Excites You? My Road to the Pursuit of Fundamental Principles
SEKIYAMA Minoru
Mysterious Particle Neutrino
TAKEUCHI Shuta
Using Arrows to Point to How Memory Works
TSUJI Keita
Symmetry is Everywhere
NAKASHIBA Shuma
Make Sandwiches To Explore Physics: a systematic way of encoding physical systems
HASEBE Rinta
Low Temperature Physics: One of the Most Attractive Stage of Extreme Environment
HIRAOKA Takuto
Why I study metasurfaces―Science gives me the clues
HIRAYAMA Amiri
Shedding light on the dark universe
MATSUDA Ryota
Why I Dived into the Microscopic World
YAMADA Shozo
A Study in Scar
YOKOKURA Junya
Just Calc It? No!
KISHIKAWA Ryo
Old Light Enables New Discoveries
YONEDA Shun
Observing Space Sharply through the Atmosphere
TAKADA Kanata
What on earth is happening in the earth?
ASAMI Yosuke
Unfamiliar terrain in the microscopic world
ANZO Mikiko
Replacing Minor Metals with Abundant Materials for a Greener Future
WANG Xinpeng
Inflation: Baby Universe to Big Bang in a Blink
AOYAGI Shungo
The Hidden Shapes of Matter: My Journey into Electron Worlds
KIYONAGA Yuto
How Can Material Science Change the World?
TAZUKE Kosuke
Turning Materials into Magnets by Ultrafast Light Control
HONDA Kensuke
Reduction of greenhouse gas, CO2, through active control of molecular motions with a special laser
MASAOKA Rintaro
Exploring the Zoo of Matter
YAMADA Midori
Weird Magnets… and How to Study Them?
SUZUKI Takumi
A Letter to My 12-Year-Old Self: The Future Is Made of Light