About myself
Hi, my name is Florian SIMON. I'm an exchange student from Germany and a former member of Prof. SAITO's Laboratory (2012). In my home university, the Dresden University of technology I'm studying to be a high school teacher of physics and mathematics.
“Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don't think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn't stop you from doing anything at all.” -Richard Feynman
What I was doing here
I was a participant of the Tohoku University Junior Year Program in English (JYPE). My task in this lab was to create animations, which I can use in my future life as a teacher for mathematics and physics. My goal was to create those animations, in order to give pupils good support during their learning periods in daily school life. I hope this will help to decrease (possibly existing) aversions against scientific topics in school, will help them to understand complex elements of science better and increase their own level in that subjects.
About JYPE
The main purpose of this program is to offer an opportunity for overseas students to take science, engineering, and agricultural science courses at Tohoku University, without having to attain the Japanese language proficiency that would be necessary to take the same courses in Japanese. All lectures are given in English and course credits will be given by the standards for the equivalent courses offered in Japanese.
The core (required) course of this program is the Individual Research Training course, where students will research, with the support of research groups to which the students are assigned, in a current topic that is related to their field of studies.
For further information, please have a look at this link: Tohoku University JYPE Program
Other
If you're able to understand the meaning of texts in german language, please have a look at this online article of the german newspaper SPIEGEL ONLINE. It's about international exchange students, who "dare" to come to the Tohoku-area for one or two semesters.