Seoul National University student group visited iTHEMS on January 10, 2024
On Wednesday, January 10, a group of 22 undergraduate students part of a student group called GLEAP from Seoul National University (SNU) came to visit iTHEMS, accompanied by Professor Ji-Young Lee, Associate Dean of the College of Natural Sciences in the School of Biological Sciences at SNU. The students were from various years (2nd to 4th year undergraduates) and a wide range of scientific fields, including mathematics, chemistry, biology, physics, and statistics. Their visit to iTHEMS was part of a several days' tour of various Japanese universities and research institutes, to consider their future career opportunities and research directions.
Upon arriving at RIKEN, the group was greeted by iTHEMS members Dongwook Ghim and Catherine Beauchemin, and were first taken on a tour of the Nishina Center ion beam accelerators. They then enjoyed very brief, casual conversation in the iTHEMS common rooms with some snacks. Catherine Beauchemin gave a 5-min introduction of the various opportunities for SNU students to become iTHEMS members in the future (e.g., JRA, IPA, SPDR, RS/SRS). Then 6 different iTHEMS researchers (Dongwook Ghim, Misako Tatsuuma, Akinori Tanaka, Catherine Beauchemin, Steffen Backes, Ryo Namba) gave great 12 min talks about their research, and some additional iTHEMS members also joined. After that, several additional iTHEMS members joined and each of the students and iTHEMS members briefly introduced themselves and their research interests. This was followed by interesting, casual discussions between iTHEMS members and the SNU students over light food. The students told me they thoroughly enjoyed their visit to iTHEMS and learning about the wide range of research our members conduct. Overall, this provided a great opportunity to showcase iTHEMS members' research to young researchers considering their future academic career.
Many thanks for the amazing support provided by all the iTHEMS assistants without whom this event would not have been possible, to the iTHEMS researchers who took their time to take part in this event and make it so interesting for the students, and with special thanks to Dongwook Ghim, himself is a graduate of SNU, for all his help and for being such an inspiring role model for these students of his alma mater.
Reported by Catherine Beauchemin
