材料科学特別研修Ⅱ

理学研究科化学専攻 Chiomaさん

From April 18th, 2023, to May 18th 2023, I was officially a visiting faculty in the department of Chemistry, Binghamton University. I spent about one month in Professor Rozners laboratory during this period. My first time of meeting Professor Rozners (virtually) was in November, 2021 when I was a co-organizer for GPMS international symposium and I invited him to be one of the speakers in my student session. However, prior to that time I had heard so much about him in my lab because his work/idea is one of our most referenced sources.

Photo: Group picture with Professor Rozners and his lab members.

Binghamton University is the State University of New York with about 4 campuses attached to them, but I stayed in the Vestal campus throughout my stay. The first impression of so many people when I was going to New York was of concern because of the ‘busy New York city’ idea that the whole world knows but that was not exactly the case. America is very big in land mass and New York is a state with so many cities in it. The place I stayed in was Binghamton city, it is up north New York State and about 3 hours drive away from the city hub. The city is very quiet, in the countryside and most of the inhabitants are students at the university, retirees or indigenes.

Photo: Binghamton University (Vestal Campus) Entrance

Professor Rozners group is one of the most popular labs in the department and it is very culturally diverse with some of his members being from Middle East Asia and Europe, asides the Americans there. The group comprised of undergrad students, masters students, PhD students and post-doctoral researchers all of whom were very instrumental to the ease of my settlement into the lab life and environment generally. Asides some familiar experiments that I already know here in Japan, I was able to learn two new instruments: Confocal fluorescence microscopy and Isothermal titration calorimetry. I ran some experiments on my samples that I took with me from Japan and I got some really interesting results. My designed probe seems to have penetrating prospects in cancer cell lines like Hella and MCF-7 cells. This set of results were very interesting to my host professor but asides his interest, he was actually very surprised at how much I could achieve during my 1 month because we initially thought 1 month was too short to get a good data. Also, it was an exciting result for my Professor in Japan (Professor Nishizawa), as he said it could spark more collaborations between both laboratories.

Photo: Preliminary microscope viewing of cells before the main Confocal fluorescence microscopy experiment

Asides lab life, I really enjoyed exploring the beautiful nature and wood life in a countryside like Binghamton. I hiked and trailed a lot with some of my new friends over there and this remains one of my most memorable memory asides lab life in America.

Photo: Hiking

I came back to Japan on the 21st of May 2023 and overall, I would say my experience in America was an entire and well rounded one. It was indeed a good experience to have a first hand research encounter in a different environment and to also put my independence in research to full test. I am super thankful to the entire team in GPMS who made this study abroad a reality especially with the short notice that came with mine.

Photo: Japan Airport departure