[No. 228] Reo Onuki

It is a great honor to be asked to contribute to "Jukuin Raio" (Alumni Coming and Going).

I withdrew from the Graduate School of Science and Technology in March 2024, and I feel humbled to be writing this among articles by so many alumni who have gone on to achieve great things in various fields after graduation.

I am grateful for the generosity of this school, this faculty, and Professor Nakano for giving someone like me the chance to contribute.

Setting aside what you may be wondering about for a moment, let me tell you about my life before university.

While I was a student at Keio Chutobu Junior High School, I was diagnosed with osteosarcoma in my left knee. This is a type of bone cancer that often develops in children. After nine years of dedicating myself to baseball through elementary and junior high school, this diagnosis closed the door on my path to continue playing sports. Later, at Keio Senior High School, I served as the manager of the softball-style baseball club. My love for physics led me to choose a science track, and I decided to enter the Faculty of Science and Technology.

Around the same time I entered university, I had two significant encounters.

One was my encounter with wheelchair softball. For me, with a bad knee that prevented me from running or playing sports while standing, the realization that "I can play sports again, I can chase a ball again" was a miraculous discovery.

The other was with the Keio Chutobu Junior High School girls' softball team. Through my high school coach, I was given the opportunity to be involved in sports as a coach, since I could no longer be a player.

My university years were built on these three pillars: academics, being an athlete with a disability, and coaching.

As an athlete, I had the chance to play for the Japanese national wheelchair softball team in the fall of my first year of university, and I have been playing for the national team ever since. In my third year, I also started playing wheelchair basketball.

My days were spent not only as an athlete but also as a coach, deeply engaged with the sport. Through my connection coaching junior high school students, I also began coaching the university's women's softball team.

I feel that I grew significantly by not only dedicating myself to sports from a subjective athlete's perspective but also by considering what it means to improve in a sport from an objective coach's point of view.

As for my studies, I was never better than anyone else. That was true in high school, and it remained true after entering university. As you may have gathered from reading this far, I was extremely busy, but of course, I also tackled lab reports and studied for tests. Although I sometimes had to rely on help from my friends, I managed to make time and somehow keep up. Looking back, I realize how fortunate I was that it was the study of a field I loved.

In my fourth year, I was assigned to the Nakano Laboratory. Not knowing my left from my right, I received a great deal of help from Professor Nakano and my senior lab members. I completed my graduation thesis in the field of integrated circuits for ultrasonic cancer therapy devices and successfully graduated.

After graduation, I went on to graduate school. Although I was not an outstanding student, I had an ordinary desire to do my best in the world of research. However, around the same time, I received an offer.

"To be a professional wheelchair softball player-manager."

It was a proposal to become the first professional in the world of wheelchair softball.

Given the competitive environment of wheelchair softball, the frequency of activities was not very high, so I believed I could balance it with my research and accepted the offer. During my one-year term, I achieved the result of finishing as runner-up in a national tournament, fulfilling my duties not only as a player but also as a manager.

The following year, I did a six-month internship at the Lincolnway Special Recreation Association, an organization for sports for people with disabilities in Illinois, USA, where I played wheelchair softball and basketball. At the 2023 Wheelchair Softball World Series that summer, I was able to win the championship with the Japanese national team and personally received the tournament's MVP award.

Meanwhile, the reality was that I was not dedicating any time to my research activities. I stepped away from research from the latter half of my first year of graduate school and took leaves of absence the following two years to focus on my athletic and other activities. It wasn't that I had grown to dislike research or the lab; rather, it felt like I had rediscovered other things I was passionate about.

Then, in the spring of my third year of graduate school, after receiving a job offer from a company during my concurrent job search, I decided to give up on research and enter the workforce. I withdrew from graduate school the following March.

I am currently involved in marketing at a company while continuing my athletic activities. In fact, I also started playing wheelchair handball while in graduate school, and in 2024, after becoming a working professional, I was selected for the Japanese national team and was able to compete in the World Championship held in Egypt.

A so-called "humanities-track job" and athletic activities. If you ask me if what I learned at the Faculty of Science and Technology had any meaning, the direct answer might be "no." However, there is no doubt that my experiences in the Faculty of Science and Technology and the laboratory have made me who I am today.

It is often said that "there are all kinds of people at university," but I believe this can be both true and false depending on how you interpret it. You can certainly meet a wider range of people with diverse backgrounds than in junior high or high school. However, even if they come from different origins, your perspectives inevitably become similar to those of people studying in the same faculty, department, and laboratory. (In fact, I feel that is where the value of a university lies.)

At the same time, looking back, I feel that having had many opportunities to interact with people from the outside world was of immense value to me.

"The most important thing in the world is the relationships and interactions between people. This in itself is a form of learning."

These are the words of Yukichi Fukuzawa, whom I admire.

Even research in the Faculty of Science and Technology cannot be accomplished without human interaction (though I may not be the one to say it).

I don't know if the person reading this is someone about to enter this school, a current student, or someone who has already left, but if you thought, even for a moment, "Wow, a person like this exists," or "What an interesting person," please get in touch. I'll treat you to tea or something.