Glocal Global School Tokyo Tech

The class answered some of the questions I had in my mind, and alsointroduced new things that I took for granted before. I have never thought muchabout the swallowing mechanism and the structures that are involved in that –which turned out to be complex. I thought that the main reason the elderlypeople are unable to enjoy their food is due to the lowered sensitivity oftheir taste buds. I never thought that chewing and swallowing difficulty playsa major role too since my 80-years old grandfather is wearing false teeth andstill actually retains most of his teeth.

My impression regarding this course can be divided into two majorcategories –the material (including the instructor) and the group work. AlthoughI immensely enjoyed the lectures, I cannot deny the fact that they would havebeen way more enjoyable if they were imparted in English. Professor Kanekodelivered the materials in an easily understandable and light-hearted, yetcomprehensive way, and I like it. However, there were some points where thematerials seem to be deviating, such as the part when the discussion aboutethics in science and genetic engineering was carried out.

I found the group work experience to be interesting since my groupmates came from different backgrounds. One of them was a Thai, so a fellowforeign student but from a different country. The other two were Japanese, butone of them is already married and doing his PhD while working. Our workingstyle was different from each other, also our way of thinking, but we managedto complement each other and did meaningful discussion regarding the topics. Welearned a lot of new things along the way, too, especially in the lastpresentation. I think this is a useful course for learning new things and newways of communication.

It was my pleasure to participate Glocal spring school program. Joining the three consecutive days seminar, I could learn many things from lecturers who come not only from academia but also industry. In the academic session given a lecture by Tokyo Tech faculty, I could learn problem solving and creative idea to solve world-scale problems.Also, I learned research ethic which is very important for Ph.D. student (as a junior researcher) ; it emphasized me again how importance of research ethic and how to avoid breaking research ethic through real class activity and examples prepared by Tokyo Tech faculty. More importantly, a presentation based on design thinking and innovative ideation methods from Mr. Nobumichi Tosa excited me through the concept of nonsense-machines produced by Maywa-Denki.

Lastly, most of participants are mixed group of Ph.D. students from different countries and different research field and the activities mainly conducted by discussions and poster presentation can make a closer relationship with all group members.This help me get a lot of new Ph.D. student friends who shared the same goaland same passion on doing the research and future career endeavor. Specially, in my group, I luckily got to know two students from Hitotsubashi Universityand Imperial colleague. Both of them are energetic and kind persons who initiated many fun and creative ideas. We strongly believe that we will become friends for life and support each other as much as possible.