The Team
Shen Tian
Project Manager
"Skill Oriented sessions"
[2018- 19]
Ken Kuroki
Project Manager
"The Intersections"
[2018]
Yuma Aoki
Project Manager
"The competition"
[2018]
Helen Etemad
Project Manager
"SciTalk"
[2018- 19]
Julia Prajsnar
Project Manager
"The Intersections"
[2018]
Risqi Hidayat
Manager
[2018]
Rayene Benlaribi
Project Manager
"SciTalk"
[2018-19]
Kimihiro Nakamura
Grant Manager
[2018]
Walid Yassin
Founder
President
Shen is currently a second-year master student from the Graduate School of Science at The University of Tokyo. His current research focuses on the regulation of miRNA-mediated gene silencing by A-to-I RNA editing. His work enriches the current body of knowledge about post-transcriptional modification of small RNAs and fosters RNA drugs for better therapeutic strategies. Apart from being an academic, Shen is a big fun of art. He occasionally posts his work of pencil sketches, painting or photography on Instagram (@tian.shen). He was once shortlisted among the top 100 for the Australian Photography Awards and also in contention for the Fujifilm Photography Award!
With strong multilingual competence and the passion for learning new skills, he enjoys challenging himself constantly by tackling unfamiliar tasks in a rapidly changing environment, and working with people having diverse backgrounds. Having an inclusive mind drives him to improve himself by critically absorbing strong points from all sources, enabling him to become an open-minded global citizen.
What made you join UTI?
My desire to Join UTI is the result of my passion to promote interdisciplinary collaboration and interaction amongst Japanese and international students here at UTokyo, hoping to bring about positive change through rigorous problem solving and exceptional teamwork.
Why is participating in extracurricular activities important?
In few words, I think student’s social life is as important as their academic life. Participating in extracurricular activities could help strengthen our mind, foster better time management skills, expand our social circle and explore different interests. Therefore, extracurricular activities are important for personal development and are of great value to help us succeed in much more than just our academic endeavors.
What do you think are the options for students after graduation?
There are plenty of options for student after graduation. The majority of new graduates may consider getting a job. Some have a precise career plan and some don’t. For those who want to continue their academic research, pursuing postgraduate studies is a mainstream option. Some pursue post-grad studies to boost employability while others are driven mainly by their enthusiasm to explore deeper into their academic field. Although relatively rare, there are also people who want to be self-employed by setting up their own companies, to put their entrepreneurial potential into practice.
What advice do you give to the current students?
Since there are a number of different routes to take, students often contemplate what to do after they graduate. Everyone’s journey is different and unique! No matter what route they choose, it is important that they are open to different options. Rather than be constrained in a prosaic life, we should bravely step out of our comfort zone and explore beyond our routine work. Only after being actively engaged in a wide variety of activities, can we understand where our actual goal lies, and put all our efforts to achieve it.
Julia is from Poland. Thanks to her parents she managed to travel a lot while still a little girl and developed a passion for learning foreign languages and new cultures. Her first time in Japan was 2014. She got an opportunity from MEXT to study for one year at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto and there she was gathering data for her thesis about the Japanese propaganda during the Pacific War. After graduating and working for a year in a Japanese pharmaceutical company she was back in Japan again in 2017 as a research student. Currently, she is working on the Japanese "narcissistic" nationalism as opposed to the well known xenophobic one representative of the right-wing parties. Apart from her research, she is very passionate about promoting Polish culture in Japan and appears as a guest speaker at as many workshops about Poland as her busy schedule allows her to.
She is also very sociable and creating new networks has become sort of a specialty for her here in Japan. She reckons it is very important to be well-informed and generally to have a safety net of good friends when one is feeling under the weather. She is looking forward to meeting You all and having a lot of fun while achieving some great goals on the way!
What made you join UTI?
I want to help people get around and grasp opportunities that they otherwise might have missed.
Why is participating in extracurricular activities important?
It is important because You never know, whom You will meet during those activities and what kind of opportunities lay ahead thanks to newly made connections. They are also a platform for sharing ideas, so they might become a good source of inspiration.
What do you think are the options for students after graduation?
I am a firm believer that there are endless opportunities as long as You know what your strengths are and know who can make You use those skills up to your full potential.
What advice do you give to the current students?
I would recommend you contact your home country's embassy and ask them whether you can help with organizing some event there. Most likely they will invite you to join the first upcoming event, where you can meet a lot of people who can become your potential employers or just give you some good life advice.
As for now, I want to pursue an academic career, but I could easily have ended up working for Polish Chamber of Commerce thanks to one of the very first events I attended at the embassy, so trust me on this!
Helen is a second year Ph.D. student at the Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo. Her research focuses on the effect of motor proteins on liver disease, which might lead to a more comprehensive understanding of liver disease molecular mechanisms and it's possible therapeutics. Apart from academic life, Helen is interested in literature and cosmology amongst other things. Social comprehension of human studies, feminism and moral philosophy, stand to a great importance in her engagements. She is inspired to practice mental flexibility and affirmative thinking that is why she likes to challenge herself by exchanging notions and ideas to find the good behind everything.
What made you join UTI?
No one can neglect the fact that two minds work better than one. The idea of UTI was shared with me as a concept that students help each other to tackle their academic projects. The more I knew out about the idea, the more interested I became. UTokyoInspire (UTI) is a student-led association which aims to utilize students' capabilities in parallel to collaborating with entrepreneurs, companies and industry to assist students in tackling their challenges. I liked the inspiring and challenging spirit of the idea and met so many nice people through this group.
Why is participating in extracurricular activities important?
In the ever-changing world of science and business, the thirst for new ideas and opinions seems to be unquenchable in a way that making your way to success seems so far-fetched; though, if you get to know the ups and downs of the trail, everything would become easier and more in-hand. Extracurricular engagements would help students to expand their network of friends, learn new skills, get to know new activities and work on the sense of responsibility and skill management so that they could take bigger steps in the future.
What do you think are the options for students after graduation?
The options are so versatile that one may get confused. Some may find their way in pursuing a regular job, while others might be more interested to go on self-employment. A few might decide to take on higher education and some might actually take the chance of developing new ideas into actions. After all, as far as we are satisfied with what we are doing, there will be nothing better.
What advice do you give to the current students?
Follow your dreams, come out of your comfort zone and challenge the world to see a stronger person smiling at you in the mirror every day.
Risqi is now a second year Ph.D. student at the Department of Civil Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering. His research focuses on the development of the relationship between soil liquefaction resistance and shear wave velocity of sand with fine plastic content. He is also interested in several other things; amongst are social and self-development activities. Besides that, he loves playing badminton, hiking, and cycling. Passionate and robust desire has shaped him to be an optimistic-realistic person; setting up plans and goals taking into diverse consideration the conditions around him. He is an emphatic person. The combination of being optimist and emphatic taught him how to work in a team.
Having skills in critical thinking and sensitivity to social problems helped him to objectively recognize challenges, and the rationale behind the solution he proposes to tackle them. For him, working in a team is not only about reaching the goal, it is about having the same vision.
Why joining UTI?
In general, I believe that every student is extraordinary, but sometimes low self-esteem and confidence may bring them down. Like a diamond, it takes a lot of time being under pressure to shine bright. This fact drives me to be a person who can encourage my colleagues and friends to shine bright by utilizing their skills and knowledge in the sake of encountering and addressing various problems. For me, joining UTI will provide me with many opportunities to collaborate, and update my knowledge and discipline outside my own circle. I am sure that, “I”, alone would not be enough to solve complex problems in the real world. We will always need others, and I’m sure that I will find them here.
Why participating in extracurricular activities is important?
I would call this an investment. Extracurricular activities will not guarantee you to get the best job, rather this gives you a lot of precious moments, challenges to face, and learning that will be useful for your life. The lessons you take in class teaches you about things you like, but organization teaches you how to transform those things you learned, including how to deal with people and other applicable things that you won’t get sitting in your desk.
What do you think are the options for students after graduation?
After graduation, many choices will come to you. You can stay with the things you did before, and develop it or maybe touch on various other things and create your new interests. It all depends on you. What’s important is to know your skill set, show the best version of your personality, and understand how to utilize both to land your dream job. You can be anyone, anything you like to be, as long as you can recognize “who you are” and do the best you can.
What advice do you give to the current students?
We are in the process of learning and upgrading ourselves to the best we can. I want to remind you that you should start to recognize any good chance and opportunity that you encounter. Try many things, taste the bitter of failures, and enjoy the smell of achievements while you’re a student. I do believe that this will help you improve, whether a small or a big change, it all depends on you. “Stay hungry, stay foolish!”
Ken is a first-year Ph.D. student at the Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo. He specializes in the field of bioinformatics, a cross section of biology and information science. His interest lies in evolution and genomics as well as interaction in the ecosystem, and he is fascinated by the idea that living things can be understood in the light of the information they carry.
Ken may appear calm and quiet, but that's only until you realize he has an unquenchable fire burning inside his heart. He loves presentations and public speaking, and during his undergraduate years, he dedicated himself to the activities of competitive debating.
His passion also extends to other activities, including participating in a business plan competition, organizing research meetings in his field of study, volunteering to support students with difficulties, and even going as far as Alaska to serve as an international volunteer for conservation.
What made you join UTI?
I joined UTI because it is a place where innovation happens. Despite the large-scale campus and a huge number of researchers spanning in a vast range of fields of specialty, it had been difficult to find opportunities to collaborate with other people to run projects together. There is a large number of established fields of study, but I believe many of them share their goals: the problems in society they want to address, and collaboration among different fields enables dealing with the problems more effectively because real-world problems are always multi-dimensional.
Why is participating in extracurricular activities important?
I believe we have to have a "T" shaped knowledge and interest, with the verticle line representing the depth of your specialty while the horizontal line representing the richness and variety, which extracurricular activities have to offer. When you have both of them, you can have the synergetic effect to advance your career.
What do you think are the options for students after graduation?
In my opinion, you don't really have to assume the dichotomy of "industrial" career and "academic" career. The society is getting more and more flexible and you have diverse career options now and later as well, as long as you're capable enough to create your own career path rather than just following what other people do. What you have to do then is to always keep up with the trends of the society and, at the same time, cultivate your own specialty without being disturbed by hypes that only last for a short while. These two may sound contradictory, but I believe that's the way you can create your own future.
What advice do you give to the current students?
Talk to many people in different places. In your daily life, you probably get to talk to many people in the same group, but what's more important is to have multiple viewpoints. Unfortunately, no field or community is perfect. Some may be really advanced in technology but perhaps lacks a long history of inquiries, while others may seem old-fashioned but in fact rich in the wisdom of great giants, just for example. By talking to diverse people and understanding the different perspectives of people in different areas, you can be critical to your own perception.
Kimihiro is a second-year master’s student majoring in chemistry and biotechnology, from the Graduate School of Engineering, the University of Tokyo. His current research focuses on the organic synthesis of novel molecules that may be utilized in organic electronic devices such as organic field effect transistors (OFETs) and organic light—emitting diodes (OLED). He believes that synthesis, manipulation, and modification of molecules enabled by chemistry and biotechnology is one of the ultimate forms of craftsmanship.
Outside of the lab, Kimihiro is an intermediate tennis player. In addition, he has been studying the art of Japanese flower arrangement for over 15 years and has acquired a
master’s certificate. He takes joy in teaching the art to children at a local community center and takes pride in passing down the tradition to the next generation.
What made you join UTI?
The idea of creating a multidisciplinary platform, where passionate and innovative minds from all disciplines are brought together, strongly resonated with me. This is because the problems our society is facing are always multicomponent. Therefore, the solutions have to be multidisciplinary and cross-sectoral. UTI seems to be just the right place for such solutions to be born.
Why is participating in extracurricular activities important?
Taking part in activities outside of your research gives you a great opportunity to broaden your horizons and even add depth to your own research. Sometimes it is easier to find the answer from a different angle.
What do you think are the options for students after graduation?
In my humble opinion, we should be prepared for, rather, take advantage of “the era of great uncertainty” when new technologies and new business models are taking over the market at an unprecedented rate. What kind of value can we create that others (including machines) cannot? Career decisions should be taken so as to maximize such value.
What advice do you give to the current students?
As a fellow student, I would like to say that talking with people from all kinds of background truly changes how you perceive the world, in a way that enables you to find new challenges that you couldn’t have spotted otherwise. Let’s have a talk!
Yuma is a second-year bachelor student at the University of Tokyo, majoring in computer science. He has a wide range of interests such as economics, philosophy, civil engineering, and physics. In the future, he intends to conduct research on how individuals communicate with each other when they are working as part of a team.
Yuma enjoys seeing individuals from different backgrounds who are not very familiar with each other, gather in the same place, and work on a common cause while sharing their views and emotions. "This makes it look like we are all equal and pure in a sense without the need for any sort of attributes or social status. I would be happy if I can somehow create these kind of events or communities in the future" he says.
What made you join UTI?
In my opinion, UTI seems very progressive and important for all students and researchers. It would be fruitful if UTI can help the interaction and the collaboration between the people who are from different disciplines which is necessary to make the innovation happen in the society nowadays. In that sense, I want to be part of that process of connecting people and creating such novel value.
Why is participating in extracurricular activities important?
I think that studying at the university is not enough. You can also learn many things when you join extracurricular activities. For example, you may learn how to make an impact on society in the real world or how to manage actual projects. These skills are also essential for your future career.
What do you think are the options for students after graduation?
I think concentrating on what you really want to do is very important. People tend to choose the career path that is very apparent and stable. But if you consider your goals or what makes you happy, you may find another career path which is original for you.
What advice do you give to the current students?
I am a second-year student, so I don’t have much to say at this time. However, an advice I would give myself would be that I should try to challenge myself to embark on new things and expand my scope of knowledge. Knowing new things would definitely let you have new perspectives and broaden your horizons. Such stimulation would always keep you active and fresh.
Rayene is a second year Ph.D. student in the graduate school of medicine, The University of Tokyo. Her research is about autoimmune diseases; when the immune system, mistakenly, starts attacking the organs and tissues of its own host. There exists a wide range of autoimmune diseases, but their etiology and pathology are somewhat similar, with an interplay between genetic and environmental factors. So it felt tempting to her to tackle the pathogenesis or treatment of one of those autoimmune diseases, hoping that this will open opportunities for treatment for all the other 80 autoimmune diseases. I’ve always been a curious person, and I guess that’s why I was driven into research. I am passionate and take my work seriously and once assigned to a task, will see it through to completion. I like helping people and enjoy working with a wide variety of individuals to achieve a common goal efficiently and realistically. I thrive on challenge and always looking for an opportunity to do better.
What made you join UTI?
​
Research can sometimes (if not most of the time) be frustrating, and being too engaged might be depressing. To have an extracurricular activity would give me some balance and being involved in something inspiring and fruitful would keep me optimistic and get me to think out of the box to tackle my own problems. In addition, the idea of UTI is pretty ambitious and through it I will be able to challenge myself improve and help other students as well to get the best of their college life.
​
Why is participating in extracurricular activities important?
​
Participating in extracurricular activities by joining an organization is one of the best ways to build a bigger network. It presents many opportunities to learn more about yourself, your goals, and your strengths. Also, knowing how to work well with a team is an essential skill and by learning how different people respond and react to certain situations, you develop skills in presenting and implementing ideas.
​
What do you think are the options for students after graduation?
​
There are plenty of options available to students after graduation. But in my opinion, combining what you majored in with your hobbies and the things you are interested in, will make wonders and keep you passionate about what you are doing.
​
What advice do you give to the current students?
​
In short, “You will never influence the world by trying to be like it.”