• To have experience to study proactively in a U.S. research lab.
• To find how it is to stay and study in U.S.
• To update my way to communicate from a modest Japanese style to a more active/direct style.

Nakatani RIES Program Experience

Through the Nakatani RIES Fellowship, I tasted a flavor of life in laboratory in U.S. this summer. This was a great experience for me, because honestly I had been thinking of studying abroad in my Ph.D. career but I had not yet had the opportunity to go abroad myself. In my opinion, all university students in Japan should go abroad at least once to compare which future path to take: domestic or international. You can find not only the merits of international collaboration but also the place where you want to live. Even if you still choose graduate school or a job in Japan after your experience overseas, it makes you more confident about your choice. Fortunately, I learned that it was suitable for me to study in lab where people from many backgrounds collaborate: from a variety of scientific area as well as different cultures. There are unconscious understandings that we all are different. You may have different cultural backgrounds, personalities, and ways to think than me. All that matters is what you can do. What knowledge do you have? What skills do you have? What approach do you take to solve this problem? You have to explain yourself effectively as well. Don’t you think that this is a good place? We all can take a more flexible research path along our interests.

• My favorite experience in the U.S. was … talking with my mentor. You will see a lot of unfamiliar but interesting things in US such as terrible traffic culture, open-mind people, and unbelievable temperature gaps between inside and outside. However, what you can experience only through the Nakatani RIES program is the conversations you can have with people in lab. My mentor was incredibly kind to me and shared with me how to stay healthy mentally during research, what a Ph.D. students’ life is like, and what the culture of the academic area was in his home country. I got a lot of insights from him.
• Before I left for U.S. I wish I had … had more English skills. Though I could speak a little, it took me a while to get used to communicating in English.

Excerpts from Mariko’s Weekly Reports

• Week 01: Arrival in the U.S.
• Week 02: Life in My Research Lab at Rice
• Week 03: Interview with U.S. Student and Researcher
• Week 04: Reflections on English Language & Life in the U.S.
• Week 05: Final Week at Rice and Research in the U.S. vs. Research in Japan
• Research Project Overview and Poster
• Week 06: Last Week in the U.S.
• Final Report
• Tips for Future Participants

Week 01: Arrival in the U.S.

Before coming ot the U.S., I found that people would write on the first/last line of their emails ‘I am looking forward to meeting you’. I did not find out whether it is ‘honne’ or ‘tatemae’ like in Japanese culture, but I honestly was looking forward to staying Houston and starting researching, with both some anxiety and optimism. So, I signed-up to take 30 English speaking classes per month before I left, but actually I took only 20 or so in total.

On the day we arrived at Houston, I felt almost like a child, because it was a totally strange landscape and I felt like I would get lost. Everything is bigger here, and many people give me a kind greeting when passing by. It is not easy to understand everyone though as there are so many people with different backgrounds. We have to share ideas in a second language, not with a mother tongue when speaking to each other. At the time when I was studying in Japan, I found that it was an amazing but weird situation, it also become clear to me that international people can amazingly understand each other with our universal language: English.

At the start of my stay, we had many kinds of seminars at Rice University. I was impressed by Prof. Ozaki’s lecture about international communication. She has experience in many countries throughout her life, so she kindly gave us Japanese students tips about how to accept a different culture. In addition, she also made me feel proud to be Japanese.

When had free time on Tuesday evening, I went to the pool in the campus gym to refresh from my anxiety and nervousness. Unconsciously, I might have gotten stresed about getting into my laboratory and meeting my host professor and mentor, even though it ended up being a successful week. Rice University has a large gym and pool, so I decided to refresh myself and take a break from my hard work this week.

In my first week in Houston, I often wonder what Houstonian think about this diverse culture here. There are various kinds of people who look like they all have different backgrounds and speak languages other than English. Though I met more international students or workers here, I also heard that people in Houston are very proud of being Houstonians. I thought of my hometown, where was are also starting to get more tourists from overseas.

• For more on this topic, you may also want to read some of the articles on the ‘Diversity in Houston’ section on our About Houston and Rice University page.

Reflections on Intercultural Experiences
Staying at Rice University and in Houston for about two weeks, some of the differences of core values between U.S. and Japan are beginning to be revealed to me. They become more apparent when people face difficulties or errors in our daily lives. When I tried to log in some online service with a passcode and I missed, U.S. people say that it did not work. For another example, in case I can not open a door, people say that they are sorry that the door is too heavy. By this, I mean, people in U.S. are likely to find that the cause of the error is somewhere other than themselves. This way of thinking has a potential to improve surroundings in a short span. They place less emphasis on the past and more on the presence and future. What is important is what we are going to do from this point forward, instead of what we did before.

On the other hand, I found the Japanese core values in ourselves, the RIES Japanese fellows. First of all, we communicate by ‘telepathy’. We are talking nonverbally even if there is not any eye contact. In writing texts, we do not write many sentences and give information only if it is possible to guess, though other people do so much as they can make sense to other foreign people. How other people feel or think is often shown on their face for me. When it comes to people in the U.S., however, this situation loses its effectiveness. I can not guess the complicated feelings of others very well. Then, it made sense that Japanese people are more able to communicate via ‘telepathy’ because we share the same background.

Preparing for Research in the U.S. 
In starting to prepare for my research at Rice University, every step took me much time: searching what laboratory to go to, what I would like to study, who to work with, and what to learn before leaving. First of all, I scanned all of departments and professors in my area of interest. This was important because, unlike in Japan, my research area may be found not just in one single academic department.  I ended up joining a lab in the Department of Bioengineering even though I initially searched labs in the Department of Biosciences. As a suggestion for participants of this program in the future, I would recommend you ask professors or graduate students in Japan if they know of someone. Even telling that that you are going to U.S. is recommended. They may help you in some unexpected ways.

After I decided my host lab and sent them my self introduction email, I got some papers to read and learn from in advance. Unfortunately, I could not read them up before meeting, because I had exams and heavy reports at my home university. It finally did not matter very much for my research; I could not understand almost all of technical terms in them. My mentor sent me a summary of this summer’s research and it helped me to find what extra books I needed to read. I brought two books written in Japanese and skimmed some pages before reading the papers from my mentor.

First Few Days in the Lab
On my first day in lab, we (my mentor and me) just started reviewing the papers. Actually, though I am in department of physics, I chose a totally new field for me to do research at Rice University: theoretical biophysics. So my mentor kindly taught me from the very beginning of biology. They talked about what is biology, what researchers of biology are aiming at, and why theoretical biophysics is important. Because this is a theoretical laboratory, there are few people in the office at any given time. My mentor also said that they can work any time, anywhere, as long as they have a laptop. Before arriving at my lab, I was wondering how long I could stay, but he gave me a physical key and showed me how to open the door in order so I could come in any time I wanted.

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Week 02: Life in My Research Lab at Rice

I started my second week still studying about the subject. My mentor gave me some papers one by one, and I read partially to tell me what is important or needed for this research topic. Actually, there is limited time to meet my mentor face to face each day: for about an hour in the morning, but I could ask anything anytime online. This daily routine worked well, because I could catch up with what we are doing by reading. He gave me extra work in case I had done all I could do; though that situation never came up, thoug). Honestly, I am not good at communicating in English, especially listening and speaking. There are sometimes misunderstandings when talking such as the connections of technical terms. Even worse, it is hard to understand what he is saying at the same time even though his English makes sense, because there are lots of new concepts in this scientific field. In such cases, I gather up many questions and what I could not understand during meeting, and will send an email to my mentor or ask them the next day.

This Monday was also the start of the new semester at Rice, so there are more people than last week in my lab. Also there may be weekly seminars for graduate students in BRC, where I am working at. I talked with a doctoral student in the kitchen space in my lab. We can freely use fridge or kettle at anytime, so sometimes I have a chance to communicate with people besides my mentor. Most of them only say “Hi” or nothing, but some kindly introduce themselves and ask about me. I thought that this is a similar situation in lab in my home university.

After completing my daily research tasks, my roommates and I went shopping at a grocery store. Every grocery store here has many kinds of food or stuffs. For instance, the sweets corner is much larger than my room in Japan. We got a colorful cakes there. You have to take an Uber or Lyft car to go anywhere, they are very useful and you never get annoyed. (Photo1: a cake, we didn’t buy this, though.)

Question of the Week
I wonder why some people here like foods includes much sugar.

• Overall, Americans are known for liking the flavor of sweet things more than fermented, bitter, or spicy things.  This may be in part because most processed food in the U.S. (things you buy in cans, jars, cartons) actually contain a lot of sugar.  Sugar, particularly high fructose corn syrup, is a cheap additive that manufacturers can add to processed foods that can make things that sit on the grocery store shelves for long periods of time taste better.  The use of MSG in Japan or other Asian countries is done for similar reasons. However, the more you cook on your own using fresh ingredients, the more likely you are to ‘taste’ the added sugar that most Americans don’t even realize/notice any longer.
• Here’s How Americans Ended Up Eating Too Much Sugar (HuffPost) 
• Is America Too Sweet on Sugar? (CBS News)
• Why Do We Eat Dessert for Breakfast? (Big Think) 

Research Project Update

By my second week of research, I felt I could almost handle everything. I could discuss the problems or questions from prior research with my mentor more often than I could in the first week. My daily life in lab is going on with writing codes, reading papers, and discussions. I feel like I am doing experimental mathematics, because I am writing C codes for simulation. It is fun for me to think a lot about how to build a reasonable simulation. Though my mentor kindly teaches me anything and listens to what I think of the problem, how to solve it is totally up to me. He gives me some example Python codes for understanding methods about cancer cells. Those are just hints: I don’t have prior experience writing Python. Furthermore, this is my first time writing even C codes from nothing, though I could bring up examples from classes before. This is also a good opportunity for learning programing, because now I can study on my own with books or Google.

Actually, I still do not know what all the technical terms mean in biology. There are some protein names of cancer cells that we are treating in papers, but I have no idea about each structure or characteristic. Even though, I can deal with cancer cells. This is why biophysics is interesting I think. I am in the department of physics in my home university, so what I learned about biology or medical science is only introduction or overview. On the other hand, I have got used to solving dynamic models or other simplified structures as physics student. So I can pick up a certain feature of cancer cells such as interactions, and consider how those structure depend on their environment. In this research, it is needed to know whether the protein is activator or inhibitor for whole cancer cell.

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Week 03: Interview with a U.S. Student and Researcher

I interviewed Prof. Herbert Levine, who is my host in the Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP). Our main topic was what shifting gears from physics to biology is like. He studied and researched particle theory physics until his post-doctoral career, and then switched his direction. Actually, I am also thinking of the biological area though I am in the Department of Physics at Osaka University. This as why I wanted to talk with him.

The first question I asked was why he changed his research area. He was interested in pure physics such as particles, because they have simple questions: what the world is, how nature works, and so on. Sadly, this type of research costs a lot. Experiments need a lot of money, time, and people. So he just started searching for another practical problem, and finally found biophysics. While he did not have enough knowledge of biology or medical science, fortunately he is good at treating mathematical models. He found many problems he can solve by reading papers on experimental biology.

Next, I asked him about any difficulties in collaborating with people from biology. He says that physicists speak in physics, and biologists speak in biology. It means that people from physics can talk by words in physics researching, and so do biologists because they are trained like that. He studied biology after his switching in order to consider biophysical problems more effectively.

The final question I asked was how we can find a good collaborator. In Japan, each laboratory has its own research theme that it works. On the other hand, at Rice University, and at many universities in the U.S., they have almost only do collaborative research. According to Prof. Levine, active searching is important. Researchers proactively participate in conferences or meetings that include a variety of people, or read papers about many kinds of topics. In fact, he found his research topic of biophysics by accident. Though biophysics was not famous and common when he started researching, there were ways to contribute by physicists, and he successfully made progress.

I also interviewed a person who has completed his Ph.D. this spring. I asked him about what graduate school is like, from application to daily life. The first question I asked was about applying to graduate schools in the U.S. He says that this is not such a hard thing especially, but you can deal with it better if you start earlier. As you know, international students have to prepare many kinds of documents such as GRE scores and recommendation letters, and these take a lot of time, especially if you want them to be of a high quality.

The second and third questions were about supports from home country/university and U.S./Rice University during his Ph.D. . His home university, that is in China, gave him a great network of supportive alumni who also joined Rice University. While the university where he got his bachelor degree is not huge, it has a strong relationship between students even after graduation. When he first arrived in Houston, some alumni came to the airport to pick him up, and helped him to find a room even though they haven’t met each other before.

Staying at Rice University, he felt that not only studying but also keeping healthy or other individual life-styles are also valued, because there are many kinds of resources beside the laboratory. If you want to learn how to take great photographs, videos, or some other skills, you can always get information or take lectures at Rice University. For example, there is a large gym where students can have support for outdoor activities as well as physical trainings. He is now searching for his next university and will continue his career in academia.

Reflections on my Interviews
From interviewing a professor who has similar background as me, I figured out that it is not important as to whether to change my major or not. What is truly valued is how I can contribute to some scientific area with my skills. I am so proud that I am having fun in research this summer and my host professor and mentor welcome this fact.

Through the interview with the Ph.D. student, I felt that my anxiety to study abroad was being released by his challenging story. At the same time, I partially could find that supportive systems such as alumni relations are why many Chinese people can take a stab these years. Though every country may have some problems in education, I hope each of us students can take a try at what we want regardless of what country or university we are from, and how that career my look to be challenging.

Research Project Update
Since my research lab focuses on theoretical biophysics, I do not have any experiment. Usually I arrive at BRC around 8:30, meet and discuss with my mentor for about 30 minutes, and work on my own schedule until I want to take a beak. Though it sounds like I have a lot of free time for researching, or even sightseeing, simulations take a lot of time actually, because I am not familiar with both writing codes in C from nothing and dealing with bimolecular. Fortunately, my mentor introduced me to another postdoctoral fellow who is a programming specialist, so now I can ask about biology to my mentor and simulation to the programmer. While my mentor does not force me to learn about biological details in this research theme, I requested him some papers about the proteins I deal, because I felt it was necessary to be knowledgeable about them to discuss and consider the results of simulations more deeply. He kindly welcomed my interests and gave papers and supportive information.

I usually ask Dr. Google for programming tips in most cases. Now we are best friends! Only if he cannot answer my questions, I then send them to the postdoctoral fellow, because it is clear that dealing with codes that are written by other people, especially beginners like me, is very stressful. Furthermore, asking about programming requires me to give an accurate explanation, so I email to him with plenty of specific details and figures to prevent misunderstandings. Through these efforts, I could tell him exactly what I want to do in C. He gave me an effective improvement and saved me a lot time fixing codes by hand in every single simulation.

Question of the Week
What is a polite way to go to church? I have no idea in Houston, because most Japanese have no certain religion and casually visit shrines and temples.

• One good way is to ask any friends you know if they attend church, and if yes, ask if you can join them one Sunday.  Some historic churches have public tours or visiting hours, but if there is a ‘pretty’ church you want to visit you can just look at their website to see if they have similar tour/visiting hours.
• For more on visiting/attending church services in the U.S. see the section on Religion on our Life in the U.S. page.

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Week 04: Reflections on English Language & Life in the U.S.

This week was a time for me to experience daily life in Houston. During the long Labor Day weekend, I stayed in Houston and went around as if I were living here. There are many kinds of cafés, restaurants, and amusements near the hotel. In most cases I took Uber/Lyft car to get to different places in Houston. They are something like a private taxi service organized by a smartphone app. What you have to do is input a location where you want to be picked up and droped off. You and drivers are evaluated each other, so both should be in a good manner. Some friendly drivers talk to you during a ride, or also you can talk to them, so there are plenty of nice chances to communicate with Houstonians. I love it.

I would like to recommend these experience talking to people who cannot listen or speak well in English like me. You can start with tiny greetings like “hi” or “how are you doing?”. If you feel nervous about hearing an accent, you can quit there, or, if you are a little more confident than usual, just keep talking. The drivers may kindly tell you places they would recommend. The more times you take Uber, the more chances to try communicating you will have. Personally, it takes me a long time to get used to life in a strange area, so I try not to be too hesitant and have enough courage to embrace challenges. By doing this, I can enjoy talking with people I have not met before more gradually.

Besides such struggles, I have also enjoyed many places in Houston with the other Japanese fellows. On Monday, we went PaniQ Escape Room. It is a kind of real escape room that is designed delicately even in details. We were a little over the allotted time, but finally could succeed in getting out. There is no amusement place like this in Japan, so I really recommend future participants to go there. On Labor Day, I had a breakfast at a café in Rice Village, which is a shopping and restaurant district nearby Rice University. Though I had imagined the café would be closed or it would not busy, there were many people who were working or studying with coffee in fact. Encouraged by this situation, I worked on my research that afternoon.

Research Project Update
The more time passes, the more I feel I can understand and consider about my research theme. Unfortunately, time also flies by. I had a deadline I was struggling with on Friday, and I started designing a poster. I have been trying to simulate based on prior research, so I could find errors in scripts from the results of these papers. This week I can not be helped like that, because I finally reached the area where the papers do not know. Fixing simulations and considering these results is enjoyable, and I felt like I could stay at the laboratory and keep on researching forever. Because of lack of knowledge about the proteins being treated, I wished I could talk and collaborate with people who doing experiments about them.

What is difficult was concluding my results. I do not know what conclusion and discussions are important even though my mentor told me the biological meanings of the results. It is a similar feeling as researching in physics. I may feel that beginners can not find critical facts, but I seriously did not want to give up, so I tried to explain what I got from my results regardless of whether it looked trivial. My mentor listened carefully to me, and helped me come up with a list ofs conclusion for my poster. This week ended up with finding the direction to complete each section of a poster including introduction, results, and discussion.

Question of the Week
I can not believe that there is no traffic accident in Houston, because cars have something wrong in certain proportion. I think it is the most dangerous area around Texas Medical Center, where is the largest village of hospitals. Why this situation can be true?

• Actually, the joke is that you are not a ‘true’ Houstonian until you have gotten into your first car accident.  Minor car accidents are pretty common in Houston and happen each and every day.  Often these are ‘fender benders’ that happen on the freeways during rush hour or at stop lights when people are too impatient or not paying close attention and mis-judge how close the car in front of them is.  There are also major traffic accidents that happen regularly where people may be hurt quite severely or die.  Because Houston has *so* many cars and accidents are not uncommon, the car insurance rates you pay when you live in Houston are much more expensive than in more quiet/rural areas.
• Most people in Houston are ‘good’ drivers in that they have to be always aware and cautious about the other drivers on the.  This is we tell all our Japanese students that “If you think the car is not going to stop as you cross the street – it probably won’t stop.”  As a driver you have to think this way too and almost ‘expect’ that other drivers may not follow the rules all the time so be extra careful and aware. In that way, Houstonians are ‘better’ drivers, in some way, than drivers in smaller towns/rural areas where they may not be as cautious about the other drivers on the road.
• Each major city in the U.S. has its own ‘driving culture’ and while it can be scary to first drive in a large city like Houston eventually you learn the ‘feel’ or ‘rules’ of the roads and can become more confident.
• However, car accidents do happen in the U.S. and the longer you stay/drive in the U.S. the more likely it is that you will be in what is (hopefully) a minor accident.  This is why it is very, very important that in the U.S. you never drive unless you have car insurance and always wear your seat belt (even in a taxi or Uber/Lyft).  If you get in an accident without car insurance it can not only be very expensive but you will get in legal trouble too because it is illegal to drive without car insurance.   Even borrowing a friend’s car could be questionable as it is not always clear if their car insurance will cover you if you are the driver and get into an accident.  So, at Rice, students can sign up for a ZipCar account where for a small fee they not only can rent a car for an hour or a day but the fee also includes basic car insurance that will provide some coverage in the case of an accident.

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Week 05: Final Week at Rice and Research in the U.S. vs. Research in Japan

Looking back on these five weeks at Rice University, I have almost achieved my personal aims in Houston: to get surprised at and recall how amazing it is to research science and to feel sad to leave here. I expected that I can gobble up scientific knowledge till I got my fill as long as I was interested. It is a pity that universities in Japan do not have enough research funding so that researchers can do their main work in the lab without anxiety. To make matters worse, not small number of laboratories in Japan have a weird custom: scolding. Students have to stay at the lab at least nine hours a day and keep working. Fortunately, there is a sane culture in my second lab in Japan. Graduate students do not have to work till midnight even if they have teaching-advisor duties and the professors give undergraduate students an enjoyable research experience. From that lab in Japan and this lab in U.S., rogue ones in Japan do not look very appealing.

In my laboratory in Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP) at Rice University, everyone works flexibly. We can come in the early morning, while others come in the afternoon. My mentor says that there is someone who goes back home at two p.m., goes to bed at 4 p.m., and wakes up at 6 a.m.! I know this fact is just because this is a theoretical laboratory. Even so, they enjoy talking at lunch time, weekly seminars for graduate students, and frequently hold parties. The relations between group members are casual and friendly, so that my mentor calls the professor by his nickname. What was the most surprising thing for me is that my mentor often asks me whether I am having fun while doing research. That is the most important thing for him as a mentor, so he always told me to take enough rest and not to do boring routines for too long of a time. If I am getting bored with the research project, he even has plans to make it more interesting and suitable for me. I am moved by his passion and kindness, because I have never met an adviser like him who values my interests and joy. I am very sure that he will be a great researcher with warmth for his colleaguegs in his next career.

In leaving Rice University, I will miss the research area: theoretical biophysics. My biggest reason for participating in the Nakatani RIES program is to experience research in a diverse field, especially in bioengineering. When I applied for this program, my interest for theoretical biophysics including medical area was just coming into bloom. Even though the faculty of science at Osaka University has an honors program that provides research of experience for undergraduate students, the research themes we can choose are limited, of course. This RIES program is amazing for giving us a taste of the flavor of not only research but also different research areas. I am confused at to what I should do after going back to Japan, because fortunately and unfortunately, I found that biophysics is interesting; despite there not being any laboratory I can belong to as senior in field at my home university. This unease is going to lead me to look into other graduate school possibilities overseas in the future.

I would like not to be thought as a serious person. I hope needless to say this, but I do, because not few people around me say the same thing: we students in Japan feel scared to study abroad and don’t enjoy a lot of choices beyond the main courses in the university. I know they have all rights to choose drinks at a café, but I would like to notice we can choose something to eat if we are hungry. I know there are many hungry students in Japan.

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Research Project Overview and Poster

Finally, the day of the poster session had come. I found myself standing in front of my poster surrounded by audience members at Duncan Hall. And the next time I realized it, the poster session had already finished. All that I remember is my mentor came to say good luck to me. I need to make more effort to enjoy giving poster sessions, but it is was surprising that Rice students casually dropped by the poster sessions with curiosity.

Research Project Poster (PDF): “Boolean modeling of regulatory circuit governing Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition (EMT)”
Host Professor: Prof. Herbert Levine, Dept. of Bioengineering and co-Director  Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP) 
Host Lab: Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP)
Mentor: Dr. Mohit Kumar Jolly, Post-Doctoral Researcher, CTBP

During these five weeks, I researched about cancer call spreads by computer simulation. In Center of Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP) with Prof. Herbert Levine and Dr. Mohit Kumar Jolly. My project title was “Boolean modeling of regulatory circuit governing Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition (EMT)”.

First of all, a cancer cell can take two states: one is an epithelial state in which cells establish on a certain organ such as the breast or lung. The other is a mesenchymal state in which cells move around the body through the blood vessels. In fact, 90% of cancer patients die due to the spread of cancer cells, so I would like to reveal why cancer cells can have these two types of states and how we can stop them spreading.

As a method, Boolean network models are suitable and effective. They can deal with proteins of cancer cells by 1 or 0 which mean whether a protein exists or not. Describing four core proteins which are called SNAIL, miR-34, miR-200, and ZEB states with four 0 or 1, for instance (0000), simulation updated each protein’s state in accordance with interaction such as inhabitation and activation. In the first simulation, I manually simulated the steady state of cancer cells by using core proteins. In the second one, simulation methods got a little complicated but got more similar to the effects in our real body: asynchronous simulation. I mean, proteins reaction included probabilistic effect. In the third one, I added two proteins (GRHL2 and OVOL) to core. They are kinds of medicine. Then I also tried asynchronous simulation.

As a result, my first simulation revealed that cancer cells can have epithelial and mesenchymal states depending on probability. Furthermore, these two states can exist at the same time if there is some signal from the outside. This fact was shown by the second simulation. This also indicates that in the case where there is no signal, all cells are epithelial; and scancer stop spreading. When we add GRHL2 and OVOL, all cells finally reach epithelial state even if initial states are mesenchymal, or there is some signal from outside. Then we can say GRHL2 and OVOL stabilize epithelial cancer cells; we can make cells stop moving around.

In conclusion, core cancer proteins network can have two stable states: epithelial (high miR-34 and miR-200, low SNAIL and ZEB), and mesenchymal (low miR-34 and miR-200, high SNAIL and ZEB). And relative stability of these states depends on epithelial-mesenchymal-transition-inducing signal. GRHL2 and OVOL can stabilize epithelial state, and maintain it even in presence of the inducing signal as well as when the signal is taken away.

For future steps, I am planning to figure out the strengths of GRHL2 and OVOL as epithelial stabilizers. They can be compared by three simulations: the model using the core proteins, core proteins and GRHL2, and core proteins and OVOL.

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Week 06: Last Week in the U.S.

After finishing our research at Rice University, we the Japanese students spent a week together exploring around Philadelphia and Washington DC. I was overwhelmed by the culture, museums, and other historical sites on the East Coast as compared to the more modern city of Houston.

Arriving in Philadelphia, we visited Lehigh University, which is a small university in Pennsylvania and had the opportunity to communicate with professors, STEM students, and learn about ourselves through the StrengthsFinder assessment. Fortunately, during lunch time I got a chance to talk with female faculty member from Asia. It was just women at our table, including the other Japanese students and me, so we had time to talk about gender issues. As I had expected, she also had experienced being told to behave woman-like in her home country: marry someone, have a child, quit her job, and focus on bringing up a child. After coming to U.S., there still remains a gender gap in the work space, such as ways of communicating and discussions. What I felt sad to hear was that female students usually apologize for something even if they do nothing wrong. “Excuse me professor. I am very sorry, but could I ask a question?” I personally believe that both male and female students can achieve something in academia or industry even if there are any certain differences and gaps between the ways we deal with a problem. It may be more positive to think that we have a diverse approaches, not differences.

In DC, we visited Howard University. Prof. Thomas Searles is an Assistant Professor who graduated from Rice University with a Ph.D. in Applied Physics and was a member of Prof. Kono’s group. He also let us to talk casually with other Ph.D. students in Howard. I spent a lot of time with one of them, who sat next to me and had visited Japan before to visit laboratories in research area she is interested in. I could never have expected this, but she knows one of my best friends at Osaka University. I was so surprised that I could not figure out what was happening and say anything for a while. This fact was revealed when she was sharing her story of visiting Osaka and Kyoto for sight-seeing with the support of students from Osaka University. She not only talked about the application process of applying to universities in U.S., and how the life in U.S. is like, but also took us a restaurant she recommended for lunch. I found it is such a small world we live in, and that my friend’s kindness was returned to me as her kindness. So now, I want to pass my kindness on to someone as well.

Looking back on our visit to these two universities, I could find fragments of difficulty, liberty, and the diversity of studying abroad. International students are spreading diversity within U.S., so we should make more effort to introduce ourselves. Actually, my skills at self-introductions got better through these visits. Each topic has meaning: where I am from, what I am interested in, and so on, because there are differences not only in our present and future, but also the past we have/will have/had. Of course, people in U.S. do not share exactly the same sense of values as Japanese. I realized this fact especially when I was roaming about in the Smithsonian museums. As you may know, there are enormous works including ones invented in U.S. Each of them is sophisticated and tells me how science and engineering have developed strongly, but what made people encouraged is, wars. I felt a complex set of emotions to think of tragedy, defeated countries, victorious countries. I know people could not throw away reasons to fight at that time, but I can not stop thinking of the struggles of scientists who sadly remained their justice.

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Final Report

Dear Mom: Thank you for letting me to go to the US this summer. Wordlessly you may have been sometimes anxious about me, because of safety and the differences of lifestyle. So was I. I was wishing for you to be safe while there were many types of disasters hit Japan this summer: earthquakes and a typhoon and political issues too.

During my stay, I found that it is possible for me to look for the places where I enjoy studying. Before this program, I felt a kind of prejudice of the difficulties staying abroad for Japanese people, so I had thought I might just have to stay in Japan even if it wasn’t a good fit. For example, in Japan there is a custom of hesitancy, a never-solved gender gap, and such strict hierarchy. Somehow, I did not know there could be places in the world where I felt better to stay, and while it is challenging, it is not a bad thing to search for such places for yourself.

Dear Professor: Thank you for kindly giving advice to me about my future career. You recommended for me to study abroad if I wanted – at least after graduation as post-doctoral researcher, because I am not a specialist of both researching and speaking English. However, I saw many international students at Rice University pursing their Ph.D. Some of them came to U.S. for the first time and English is not their native language, but they took a stab. Now I would like to try as they did. If I fail at something, I will regret and remember your comments. Still, I appreciate your kindness. I took all of your advice to heart because I was worried about my future. When you understood why I preferred to going abroad, I was very relieved, because most students who leave Japan may have a similar nervousness that they will lose connections and support from their professors.

Dear Future Nakatani Japanese Fellow: You will see a lot of unfamiliar but interesting things in US such as terrible traffic culture, open-mind people, and unbelievable temperature gaps between inside and outside. However, what you can experience only through the Nakatani RIES program is the conversations you can have with people in lab. My mentor was incredibly kind to me and shared with me how to stay healthy mentally during research, what a Ph.D. students’ life is like, and what the culture of the academic area was in his home country. I got a lot of insights from him.

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Tips for Future Participants

• Working in a Research Group in the U.S.: You should ask anything right at the time you have the question. People in lab do not know whether you are following or not. Please tell the what you are thinking so that they can arrange research program more suitable for you.
• Packing Tips: Bring some daily goods, such as a sponge, soap, and plastic wrap if you have empty room in your bag. If they run out or you don’t need them you can always throw them away before leaving.
• Things to do at Rice University or in Houston: You can try variety of things at the Rice University gym: swimming, yoga, Zumba, and so on. If you are searching for something funny, I recommend you to try PaniQ Room. It is a kind of escape room for grown ups. Even university students sometimes can not succeed.

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