Please refer to the experience of the student who studied abroad.

TATSUMI Shunsuke
Master Student,  Graduate School of Science and Technology

Profile (As of January 2020)

• Laboratory: Computational Linguistics
• Education Program: Information Science and Engineering Program
• Year of studies: M2（Enrolled in April 2018）

Study abroad summary

• Host institution: AI Center, University College London (UCL)
• Period of stay: October 1, 2019 - December 31, 2019 (3 months)
• Type of Scholarship: "Tobitate! Study Abroad Initiative: Japanese Representative Program

Study abroad content

About the research:

• I conducted basic research on natural language processing under the guidance of the accepting faculty member and wrote a thesis.

About life at the AI Center:
• The AI Center was very international. There were many Asian people and I rarely felt I was a minority as a Japanese.
• I audited lectures by AI center visitors and attended regular meetings in the laboratory. I had the opportunity to give a presentation at a regular meeting and talked about my research for about 30 minutes. I was very grateful for the response I received from the lab members.
• There was much interaction with other universities (Imperial College London, Oxford University, University of Cambridge, etc.) in the southern area of England. While I did not gain knowledge directly related to my research, it increased my motivation for research.

INOUE Go
Master Student, Graduate School of Information Science

Profile (As of January 2020)

• Laboratory: Computational Linguistics
• Year of studies: M2（Enrolled in April 2016）
• Academic Plan: Doctoral course (JSPS Research Fellowship for Young Scientists)

Study abroad summary

• Host institution: New York University Abu Dhabi (Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates)
• Period of stay: August 20, 2017 - August 31, 2018 (1 year)
• Type of Scholarship: "Tobitate! Study Abroad Initiative: Japanese Representative Program
• Type of study abroad: Research project proposed by myself

Preparation for study abroad

• Around December of my first year of the master's degree program, I knew that a prominent teacher in my field of interest was going to participate in an international conference held in Osaka, and I wanted to meet and talk directly about studying abroad and research. Thanks to the kindness of my teacher, I was able to attend an international conference and I had the opportunity to meet with him. Before and after this, I exchanged e-mails with the teacher several times regarding research and study abroad.
• For study abroad funding, I used the scholarship developed from public-private collaboration for study abroad called Tobitate! Study Abroad Initiative. I hadn't made any achievements in my research when I applied on February 3 of my first year, so I made sure to carefully plan my study abroad. The study abroad plan that I wrote at that time was very useful when I was preparing application documents for the postdoctoral fellowships.

What I got out of studying abroad

• The results of my study abroad include presentations at international conferences and domestic symposiums, and the release of a database. These were jointly conducted with New York University Abu Dhabi, my current affiliation, NAIST, and my previous affiliation, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. However, I gained valuable experience in leading the research I proposed.
• I think that the experience and achievements I gained from studying abroad greatly contributed to the interview exemptions in the application process for the JSPS Research Fellowship for the first year of my doctoral studies. Not only the research results at the study abroad destination, but also designing the research project by myself, obtaining the budget necessary for implementation by myself, searching for overseas collaborators, arranging cooperation for the project, and performing research overseas for a long period of time; I think these were all important in me being highly evaluated as an active international researcher that will play an active role in my field in the future.

SATINDER SINGH SARANPAL SINGH
Ph.D Doctor Student, Graduate School of Science and Technology

The four-weeks lab stay at the University of California, Davis was incredible. I went through a lot of protein biochemistry and purifying proteins to study their dynamics using the single-molecule microscope in UC Davis's MOM lab, the join space run by Assistant Professors Kassandra Ori-McKenney and Richard McKenney. The work experience I had was once in a lifetime! I gained a lot of experience in my field and got to explore new country at the same time. I would like to seize this opportunity to thanks NAIST for giving me this chance to perform some of the cutting-edge experiments in UC Davis.