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Lecturer Haruki Watanabe has been recognized as The University of Tokyo Excellent Young Researcher.

 

Dr. Haruki Watanabe, Lecturer, Department of Applied Physics, has been recognized as The University of Tokyo Excellent Young Researcher. 

The University of Tokyo Excellent Young Research program aims to support young researchers in their new research theme. Each School and Research Facilities nominated their researchers for this program. UTokyo selected 21 researchers out of 43 nominees according to their accomplishments and recommendations.

This program started from the last year that it supports 2 years of grant, 3,000,000 yen/year, for the researchers to start their research. The nominees must meet following conditions as a principal investigator; one who is hired within 3 years by UTokyo, is under 40 years old, and is capable to manage own lab to set own research theme and able to execute it.

On Dec. 13, 2017, Those who are recognized as The University of Tokyo Excellent Young Researchers had a meeting with President Gonokami at a meeting room in Yasuda Auditorium. They presented their research theme, its resolutions, and showed their appreciation for receiving its honor.

 

 

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I am very happy to be recognized as a University of Tokyo Excellent Young Researcher and to receive the support that comes with this honor. I am one of the youngest principal investigators at the University of Tokyo and am launching my own research group here. As a theoretical condensed-matter physicist, my goal is to distill general physical principles out of the rich variety of materials around us.

I received my Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2015 and moved to MIT as a Pappalardo Fellow in Physics. I then joined the faculty at the University of Tokyo as a lecturer in 2016. I came back to Japan not knowing how to apply for research funding, and my budget for my first year here was very limited. So, I am very happy to receive this support as it provides enough funding for a duration of time that will allow me to focus on my research.

With this opportunity, I am now planning to organize an international workshop on topology and symmetry here at the University of Tokyo, inviting people from all over the world. I hope this will further accelerate the research in this field and also show the vigor of our research to the world.