Activity Reports
Helping Hands
Student essays from the 2026 WISE FoPM Graduate Program Course “Scientific Writing, Publication, and Communication”
At what point in your life did you decide to do what you are doing now? Who most inspired you to make that decision? And what did their encouragement lead you towards?
In this course, graduate students in the sciences at the University of Tokyo wrote essays to inspire junior high-school students to engage with science and the possibilities it offers the world. They describe who, or what, inspired them to study science, how this person or experience influenced them, and what they expect to achieve with their current research. 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.
LUO Yingdong
A Drop of Blood, a Crowded City
NAGASAWA Haruka
My Journey into Asteroid Research
SUGIMOTO Riku
Universality of Rock Physics Reveals Internal Structure of the Earth
SONG Mingzhuo
Paladin of Truth
AZUMA Ryusei
Chasing the "Shine": Finding Optimization in a Chaotic World
AMADA Ryuto
This beautiful and asymmetric universe
ANDO Daisuke
Invisible Gears and Mathematical Maps
OKI Takahiro
How Physics Led Me to Life
KANEDA Kei
How a Book and a TV Show Led Me to Black Holes
KAMIJO Chishin
Beyond Intuition: Connecting the Tiniest Particles to the Vast Universe
KAWASAKI Hisanori
The Book That Opened a Door to Physics
KOCHIYA Junsei
When Science Fiction Becomes Reality
SAKAGUCHI Kota
Turn your “discoveries” into “language”
SATO Shinnosuke
Chasing the Wonders of Nature
TAKAI Yuri
The Uncompleted Answer Book: Revealing New Particles with My Own Hands
TAKAGISHI Shuei
My turning point in the high school
NAKATANI Kai
The Rules of the Game from Motor Cars to Dark Matter
HIRAMATSU Hiroto
Knowledge for “Survival”
YUTANI Ryota
Finding Clues in the Quantum World
KOMATSU Yuki
Be passionate about what you do
OKISHIO Rentaro
Finding the Joy of Science
KOH Yuta
No Pre-set Answers: The Joy of Thinking and Uncovering Hidden Molecular Teamwork
TASAKI Atsuki
Driven by Curiosity
YAMANAKA Hiroto
From Alchemy to Chemistry: Gathering, Inspiration, and Synthesis
ZHOU Xiaorui
Go! Physimon
OOKA Shintaro
Controlling quantum particles with my own hands
SAKURADA Ryoga
Controlling curious particles of light
TANAKA Akiho
Captivated by the Shimmer
MIYAZAKI Daiki
Quantum Computers: Where Physics and Computer Science Intersect
RA Shiyo
From Celestial Wonder to Atomic Clock
LIM Dohoon
From Starlight to Quantum Computers