[No. 18] Yuichiro Kato

A cloudless blue sky, a row of palm trees along the sandy beach, and a striking townscape of white walls and red-tiled roofs... Santa Barbara is a popular tourist destination in California. But this city is not only known for its scenic beauty. It is home to a world-leading research university, the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Scientists who conduct world-leading research in various fields gather here, including Shuji Nakamura, who is famous in Japan for inventing the gallium nitride blue light-emitting diode. In recent years, UCSB has produced several Nobel laureates, and its momentum shows no signs of stopping, with the noise of construction for new research facilities likely to continue for some time.

It was the summer of 2000, after graduating from Keio University, that I left Japan to pursue a Ph.D. in the Department of Physics at UCSB. Five years later, I realize that graduate schools in the United States provide an environment where students can fully concentrate on their studies and research. All graduate students in science and technology fields receive tuition and living expenses, and the university covers accommodation and travel costs when they attend academic conferences. Not only are the research facilities well-equipped, but specialized staff also handle administrative, accounting, and information systems tasks that are not directly related to research. Most importantly for a research environment, there is an atmosphere that allows for free interaction with researchers from many countries and fields. The impact on research from the stimulation and ideas gained by attending lectures given by visiting researchers almost every week, or by participating in seminars by students where departmental barriers are non-existent, is immeasurable. Furthermore, the invigorating tension of studying and competing with brilliant students from all over the United States, and indeed the world, has a positive effect. Of course, the education I received at the Faculty of Science and Technology at Keio University is of the highest world-class standard, holding its own even in such an environment.

Hearing all this, you might think that graduate student life is easy and relaxed, but that is far from the truth. There are classes with thorough instruction but with homework that ends up taking over ten hours a week, and experiments and data analysis in the lab that require extensive foundational knowledge and creative application skills. When writing up results in a paper, you are tested on your ability to create a logical and easy-to-understand structure, your sense for making visually appealing figures, and your English writing skills to convey your arguments accurately and clearly. For conference presentations, you must devise ways to communicate the main points in a short time, and a certain degree of performance skill is also necessary. Naturally, a considerable amount of effort must be invested to produce research results, and you cannot graduate without them. The abilities and effort required of graduate students—scientists in the making—are on a completely different level from what is required of undergraduate students.

I find this life as a budding scientist incredibly enjoyable. The evaluation system in the world of science is fair, and good work receives high praise, even if it is from a graduate student. There is an ultimate sense of accomplishment when a professor I've never met compliments me after a conference presentation, saying, "That was a wonderful presentation," or when a reviewer of a submitted paper writes in their report, "These results are important, and the experimental data is beautiful and convincing." And the freedom given to scientists—the special "freedom" to explore a world unimaginable in daily life, using all of human knowledge and the best tools, a world of things that change on the scale of a trillionth of a second, of extreme low temperatures of minus 270 degrees Celsius, of high magnetic fields reaching 100 times that of a normal magnet—is irreplaceable. The exhilarating feeling, like a fog lifting, at the moment you understand the meaning of unexpected data; the thrill of anticipation while checking if a previously unknown phenomenon can be reproduced; and that special feeling, in the few minutes before you go to show off to your lab mates, saying, "Hey, look at this!", of being the only person in the world who possesses that piece of knowledge. All of these are addictive.

When I graduated from university, I never dreamed that as a mere graduate student, I would be publishing papers in world-renowned scientific journals like Nature and Science, and be invited to give talks at international conferences, flying between Japan, the US, and Europe. Starting this fall, I will be taking on research in a different field as a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University. I am sure it will be a challenge that is even more demanding, yet more enjoyable and exciting, than ever before.