I am affiliated with the Laboratory for the Molecular Design of Pharmaceutics at the Graduate School of Life Science, Hokkaido University. The research area I have decided to concentrate on is effective vehicles for the delivery of pharmaceuticals. I believe that if the production process of these delivery vehicles can be investigated from a mathematical standpoint, this can help in improving the production methods of these vehicles in the future. Thus, for a month, I was transferred to the laboratory at the Department of Mathematics headed by Professor Hideo Kubo in the Graduate School of Science. There, I studied subjects such as the thermodynamic processes of molecular association and self-organizing materials. Working for a month as a lab assistant in an area outside my own field, I really came to realize how mathematics forms the cornerstone of the natural sciences; the broader my mathematical understanding, the more advanced my knowledge of natural phenomena can be. Furthermore, by encountering a rigorous frame of mathematical thought, I gained a real sense of how important mathematics is in my own field, though I am sure this is equally true for every area of theoretical thought.

Report: Ayaka Watanabe (2nd-term Student)