NEWS

ICU Alumni Held a Face-to-face Graduate School Study Abroad Information Session

Update: February 2, 2023

The Winter 2022 graduate school study abroad information session was held by four ICU alumni and took place on Tuesday, December 20, 2022 in the Science Hall. The information session was organized by the Japanese Graduate Student Association in the United States, the co-organizer was MEXT's Inter-University Exchange Project "Support for Forming Collaborative Programs with U.S. Universities through Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL)", and the session was supported by the Funai Foundation. A total of approximately 60 people participated in the face-to-face session and online.

The first part introduced the activities of the Japanese Graduate Student Association in the United States, followed by lectures from the four ICU alumni on the following themes.

Ayane Maruichi "The Choice of Attending Graduate School Abroad: Preparation and Strategy before Application"
Takamasa Kudo "Things I Wanted to Know When I was an ICU Student"
Yujiro Tazawa "How Japanese and Foreign Companies Regard Studying for a Ph.D. Degree in the U.K."
Suzu Kitayama "A Humanities Student Going to Graduate School? Why I Decided to Go to Graduate School and My Strategy"

The second part consisted of a panel discussion where the panelists freely answered the questions which had been collected from students who had pre-registered. There were many questions such as "What is life like as a graduate student abroad?", "When should I start considering about going to graduate school abroad?", "What are the things which should be done as an undergraduate student?", and the questions revealed a high interest among students to attend graduate school abroad.

The comments from participants at the session included "I was able to listen to various talks by people utilizing different types of study abroad programs.", "I was able to listen to multi-lateral viewpoints which included studying the Humanities and Sciences as well as studying in various countries.", "I was able to visualize what it is like to study at a graduate school abroad as well as the future which awaits me after pursuing this path."

Profile of lecturers:

Ayane Maruichi (Studying in the Ph.D. program at the University of California, Berkeley: Endocrinology)
Ayane Maruichi graduated from Division of Arts and Sciences, College of Liberal Arts, International Christian University in March 2020, majoring in biology. After she obtained her master's degree from ICU Graduate School (5-year program), she entered the Ph.D. program at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2021. Her research theme is on the function of genes and the analysis of its mechanism which is regarded as a target for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease.
Ito Foundation for International Education Exchange scholar (2020-2022), JASSO scholar (2023-2025), QUAD Fellowship (2023-).

Yujiro Tazawa (Graduated from the Ph.D. program at Oxford University: Materials science)
Yujiro Tazawa graduated from Division of Arts and Sciences, College of Liberal Arts, International Christian University in March 2014, majoring in chemistry. He entered Oxford University in October 2014 and carried out research on colloidal quantum dot solar cells. He completed his Ph.D. program at Oxford University in 2018 and in April 2019, he entered the Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry, Materials Science Research Laboratory. He currently works at Boston Consulting Group as a knowledge analyst in energy.

Takamasa Kudo (Graduated from the Ph.D. program at Stanford University: Chemical biology/systems biology)
Graduated from then Division of Sciences, College of Liberal Arts, International Christian University in June 2011. In April 2012, he entered the Master's program at the Graduate School of Science, University of Tokyo. In 2013, he left the University of Tokyo and entered the Ph.D. program at Stanford University. After gaining his Ph.D. degree in 2021, he began working as a postdoctoral researcher at Genentech. His research theme is on large-scale measurement of cells and modeling.

Suzu Kitayama (Studying in a Master's program at Lund University: International development and management)
Suzu Kitayama graduated from Division of Arts and Sciences, College of Liberal Arts, International Christian University in June 2021, majoring in development studies and minoring in education. In September, 2021, she entered Lund University in Sweden. She specializes in development studies and international cooperation, and is currently researching development issues relating to children (mainly child labor and education). She is mainly focusing on development issues in Latin America and her Master's research is on the social situation in Venezuela and the effect of educational opportunities for children.