NSF grant affords team of Nebraska students research experience in Japan

Three Nebraska Engineering students and a physics student from Nebraska Wesleyan University will gain unique experience for nine weeks this summer, working on a research project at a university in Japan.

Rachel Wagner, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering, is the only graduate student on the team, which also includes Nebraska undergraduates Laurel Wagner, a senior in chemical engineering, and Jonathan Janecek, a junior in electrical engineering, and Christian Sunderland from Nebraska Wesleyan.

The team, which left May 22 for Japan, is supported with a three-year grant awarded to Sangjin Ryu, associate professor of mechanical and materials engineering, from the National Science Foundation (NSF) International Research Experiences for Students (IRES) program.

The students were selected following a statewide application process, during which Ryu and Jessica Deters, assistant professor of engineering education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, reviewed the applications and interviewed the students. Later, Ryu and Deters will collaborate to understand how being immersed in research in a different culture impacts students' development as engineers and researchers, drawing on Deters' expertise in global engineering programs.

"This program is very meaningful," Ryu said. "It will provide students with research experience and expose them to collaboration with people of other cultures and countries. Most of them have no experiences in either, so this will be very valuable to the students, and we hope it will also be valuable to Nebraska and our university."

Their first week in Japan, the students will stay at Kobe University and acclimate to the country and the culture. Ryu said that opportunity was made possible through a long-standing collaboration between UNL and Yasuhito Shirai, dean of Kobe's Graduate School of Agricultural Science. Shirai annually brings a group of students to UNL to visit the agriculture programs and local sites, Ryu said.

Then, the students will work for eight weeks alongside researchers at Toyohashi University of Technology who are using microfluidics and CMOS sensors to develop portable diagnostics devices to detect viruses or bacterial pathogens.

The students' trip will also include visits to local Japanese companies, such as Kawasaki, before they return in late July.

In the next two years, the IRES grant will allow more Nebraska students to work in Japan, and Ryu said he hopes this grant is the beginning of a collaboration between Nebraska and Japanese universities.

"I've heard from my Japanese colleagues that their universities are always looking for international collaborators because their government puts a lot of weight on globalization of their academic institutions," Ryu said. "That means more opportunities for our students to participate in exchange programs and develop global experience as well."