OIST Welcome Ceremony 2026

[music] Good morning. That's even better. Um, welcome to the welcome ceremony. So as you know each year we start our academic year on September the 1st and in that week normally on September 1st but uh this time Friday we welcome all of our new students our new faculty and the new academic year with a ceremony to say hello and welcome to Okinawa. So this year um we have several new faculty, we have quite a few new students. I'll be introducing students who make up the final phase of the class of 2025. I'll be introducing a lot of students who make up the first two groups of the class of 26. We have new faculty as I mentioned. We also have a new academic year. Um but to start off proceedings um it's appropriate to put everything into an Okinawan setting and we are delighted to have once again our Okinawa dancers. Uh these are all members of the OST community and our musical ensemble Chindermies. These are again all sunshin players from the oy community staff students even faculty. So this year our dancers who can come on now if they want um will be Amichi Nenen Naoko Tokamoto Hisana Nakamoto Kawori Yamashiro Ayuka Mio Igarashi Lena Hashimoto and Aayumi Nagay. Now they will be dancing two dancers and they will all be in costume and there's a prize if you can recognize which person is which. So to introduce the first of our dancers, I'd like to call on Aya Puka and Chucky Chibana. Um and our first dance is Yuchiaki. Good afternoon. Oh, good morning everyone. >> To our new students, new faculty members and everyone in joining the community. Welcome to Oy. Today we are greeting you in one of the indigenous languages of Okinawa. >> In Okinawa, we welcome our guests with music and dance. Used to be performed at Shuri Castle for international guests in the days of the Ryuku Kingdom. Thomas, are you ready to dance? Just It's okay. Oh, he Oh [singing] [chanting] Jesus. Who's He [singing] was Oh, You are Oh, [singing] He [singing] might [singing] Holy Jesus. >> [singing] >> Oh god. Oh, [singing] >> [music] >> He might [singing] Holy Jesus. [singing] Down. Let's go. [applause] >> [applause] >> How was the performance? Good, good, good, good. >> Thank you. We're glad you enjoyed it. Next piece is Please picture yourself at the Tancha Beach. The local people used to catch fish there and carry them in baskets like that. Now that you have become a member of the community, we are performing the local dance. We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to the master teachers of Shimabukury for their generous support in preparing our costumes and makeup for today's performance. Also, we are honored to have and members from Shinjui traditional music club for playing the sin and singing with oy members. Chindam. >> And now, please enjoy tame. [applause] Hallelujah. [applause] I'm coming home. >> [applause and cheering] >> La [cheering] >> [cheering] >> The end was Holy joining. [cheering] [applause and cheering] You are mercy. >> [cheering] >> HAWAI [singing] she I [singing] single. [singing] Hallelujah. >> [singing] >> It's time to joy. fly. [applause] Thank you so much to Chinder [applause] and to our dancers. Of course, you can catch Chindies from time to time playing around campus. They play on special occasions. They play sometimes just because they want to. And also, thank you to our dancers. They don't normally dance around campus. As an aside, if you did like the Tanay song and you fell in love with that beautiful rhythm, uh it's a very famous song around Okinawa. We're lucky to actually be in Tancha. And you are lucky because you can go at any time of the day or night down to the Tunch Beach to the little car park at the end and push a button on a machine which will play that music for you. There's a few of these scattered around Okinawa. I know another one with the famous sugarcane song in Yuman. Let me know if you find more. Right, I digress. To start off the academic year, it's um my pleasure to introduce the president, Daniel Zeman, uh to give some remarks. Unfortunately, he can't be with us here today, but uh he has sent an electronic likeness of himself. Welcome to Oy, dear new graduate students. Welcome to Oy and welcome to Okinawa. Today, you're joining a scientific community that is unusual in many ways. We come from different countries, different cultures, and very different scientific disciplines. But we share something fundamental. Curiosity. The desire to understand things that they're not yet understood. You all have arrived here because of what you have already achieved. But graduate school is not really about demonstrating what you already know. In fact, one of the first discoveries of graduate school is usually just how much you don't know. And strangely enough, that is good news. Science advances through answers, of course, but it often begins with a question, a good question that someone was willing to ask when the answer was not obvious or occasionally with an experiment that produced exactly the opposite result from the one you had confidently predicted. So during your time at Oy, I encourage you to be ambitious in the questions you ask. Cross boundaries, talk to people outside your field, take advantage of the extraordinary diversity of disciplines and people around you. At Oy, the person sitting next to you at lunch may be studying neuroscience, quantum physics, marine biology, or something you have never heard of. Talk to them anyway. Some of the best scientific ideas begin with a sentence, I know almost nothing about your field, but and do not be afraid of failure. Experiment fails, ideas fail, code refused to run for reason known only to the computer. Sometimes months of work lead to the conclusion that your beautiful hypothesis was simply wrong. This is not a detour from science. It is science. What matters is what you learn and what question you ask. There's no more things to I hope you will remember. Science is a profoundly human activity. Your success here will depend not only on your intelligence but also on your generosity, integrity, collaboration, and your willingness to help other people succeed. You're beginning an extraordinary period of your life. There'll be certainly moments of frustrations, but there will also be moments when something suddenly becomes clear. Perhaps something that nobody before you has understood. Those moment are why we do science. So be curious, be courageous, be generous with with one another, ask difficult questions, enjoy a kinawa, and occasionally remember to leave the laboratory. Above all, enjoy the remarkable privilege of having a few years in which your job is to explore the unknown. We are delighted that you have chosen Oy as the place to do it. Welcome to Oy and I wish each of you a wonderful adventure. Thank you. Thank you, President Zeman. Um before I move on to the next phase, I'd like to read a congratulatory telegram. We don't get many of these at the welcome ceremony. We get quite a few at the graduation ceremony of course. But this one comes from Corgi Suzuki, the president of the National Institute of Technology, otherwise known as Corsen from the Okinawa College, which is up in Nagago City. So, congratulations to all new students on your admission. May you enjoy a fruitful student life and develop into resilient and accomplished individuals. We also wish for the continued growth and success of your esteemed institution. 4th of December 2026. Cordi Suzuki, president of Corsen. Thank you, Suzuki. Okay, moving on to the next part of our welcome ceremony, which is to introduce our new faculty. um each year as you know Oy keeps growing and we keep putting on um additional research staff but we're also hiring additional very talented faculty. Uh we have this year the privilege of introducing six new faculty. For those of you who are good at mathematics, you might notice that there are only four chairs. I'd like to now call on our new faculty uh to come to the center stage so we can see who you are and put you in the spotlight. [applause] So the first I would like to introduce is professor Jins Sunun Lee. She heads the energy materials and sustainability unit. And if you could please say a few words about yourself. Nice to meet you. And I joined at OS last November. And um u my unit is mainly work on like heterogeneous catalysis and also like a new catalytic materials for sustainable energy and the chemical convergence. So and so and we are particularly interesting in like how we can control the catalytic reactions like through atomic scale design of materials and interfaces and also we are interesting in investigating new like reaction catalysis mechanisms in a real application. So if you're interested in our research field then feel free to contact us or if if you're not in even though you're not in chemist or like chemical engineering background researcher students but if you have like breakthrough ideas to integrate your expertise into our research field fields you can contact directly with me via email after discussing where with your facult uh I'm also quite new to oist So um in some sense we are kind of starting uh the OSD journey together. So although the PhD like um duration is quite tough but I hope you um enjoy exploring different research areas and then meeting many new people and have like making good colleagues and then also finding something new here that excites you. Welcome to OIST and also I look forward to seeing you around. Thank you. [applause] >> Welcome to Oyst. Uh the next person I would like to introduce is Professor Mateo Paresi. He's heading the algebraic combinatorics and fundamental physics unit. >> Uh it's a pleasure to be here. Um I wish to say hi to everyone. Um I'm also relatively new and I started in April. Um my unit as is at intersection between fundamental physics and pure math. Um and I work on understanding new geometries uh that describe interactions of elementary particles which are the building blocks of the universe the tiniest things you can uh you can see. Um and my uh work is really um try to bridge somehow um math and physics and OS gave me this opportunity to uh to do so in an interdisciplinary environment and I'm sure you will enjoy this environment where you can interact with different units or different fields without uh department and I hope you can interact with many new faculties and many faculties that are here um and um I really um appreciate this opportunity and I look forward also to having uh some members of my unit and one student is already here uh and they will more stu more students and more posttos will arrive uh so I look forward to to start a new group and to be at an intersection with these two disciplines um and also to explore more Okinawa um because I didn't know much about it and it's a great opportunity always is connected also with a with a local culture with the local community and I'm also looking forward to um say contribute to that and to interact more with this and I hope you will enjoy your path and I uh I wish you to be um uh to be adventurous and curious. Uh and this is a unique moment in in your life where you can really explore the boundaries of of knowledge and your of yourself as well. Um and let's say you're very free to do so. Um when you become a faculty um you have let's say more knowledge maybe or more experience but you also have more responsibilities. So I feel like being a graduate student is really um an opportunity to branch out and to be adventurous. uh and hopefully uh you can be adventurous with the support of uh faculties and people around you. So you will not be lost or even if you're lost you know you to find something and you can find your path. Um and if you're lost and you want to go to Tancha Beach you can. Uh and if you want to join the dances and activities there are many opportunities. So I think you're in a great place and I wish you welcome um to Okinawa. And if you want to talk to me about fundamental physics, about particles or about uh communatorics or geometry, uh let me know. I'm very happy to um uh to interact with anyone here. Thank you so much. [applause] >> Thank you so much, Matteo. That was um yeah, he got all the keywords. He gave a good encouragement to the new students. I'll give that a 10. Thank you. Right. The next uh professor to introduce is Dan Daniel. He's heading the droplet and soft matter unit. >> Hi, thank you for the introduction. So I my name is Daniel. So I am I've been here since December last year. And uh I think for some reason I am always drawn to islands. So I grew up in Singapore and then I also spent a lot of time in Bali and for some reason now I end up in Okinawa, another island. And I think it's because islands are very unique places and oy is an especially unique place to do science surrounded by very beautiful sea. And I think my hope is that no matter what scientific disciplines we pursue, we'll always try to do very unique and beautiful science. And this is the way I approach uh what I do. Uh and I'm looking for students. So if you're interested in droplets of matter, please come talk to me. Just say hi. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Welcome to Oyst. Uh the next is a professor I have not had the opportunity to meet yet. Shraan Praep is heading the geomimicry emergence and meta soil unit. >> Thank you for the introduction. Um so I think I am the newest person here and I think I've been here the same time as most of you. Uh I arrived last Friday and I started on September 1st. So uh I am Shraban and that's a whole bunch of words in there but the main idea is that it's a new way of understanding how soil functions emerge and to understand that we need to explore soil the most complex and the abundant material on earth from an angle of soft matter mechanics and transport phenomena. So combining all this we'll be able to understand soil in terms of its memory its texture and the living component of it so that you can generate and create new types of soil and there's applications ranging from precision agriculture to space exploration and uh predicting natural hazards and also so why OST so it's a very interdicciplinary research and OST uh gives us a platform to do such kind of research that is not available in traditional universities with departments that have boundaries so it is very important to I was as a place to do such research and Okinawa is a place similar to the place I grew up in South India. So Kerala is a place where you have it's monsoon it's humid. So uh Okinawa feels like home coming back home and uh I feel like a lot of people here who would like to do uh interdisciplinary research and it's a very good place uh and I believe that uh my unit will also be able to offer you uh new uh research area and exciting fields to explore. Thank you. [applause] >> Welcome to Oy. So just before we wrap up this, I'd like to also introduce two faculty who unfortunately cannot be with us today. The first of these is professor Tomayuki Arakawa and he is in the chai representation theory unit. So another mathematical physics area and then finally professor Ean Wang in the nanomechanics kinetics and sustainable manufacturing unit. There's a lot of words in there, but um as you can see, all of these professors are very interdisciplinary. Um I I think that that is it's really good to see that we continue to attract these kind of great thinkers in new areas and it's nice to see us keeping filling in the gaps um in our faculty and in what we can offer our students. So, welcome to Oyst everybody. Thank you so much. [applause] Okay. So, the next phase is turning now to welcoming our new students. And to make a an introduction to these students, uh, I'm going to call on the dean of the graduate school, Thomas Bush. Good morning. Good morning to all members and guests of OE. And most of all, welcome to our newest cohort of graduate students. This welcome ceremony marks the beginning of your PhD of your time as PhD candidates and the start of five remarkable years. We are very happy that you are here with us. Today is the moment that you've worked hard to reach. But as Daniel already said, we did not admit you because we expected you to arrive knowing what you do. We admitted you because we believe that you can learn how to do things that nobody yet knows how to do, which is a real challenge that you agreed to take on. Your presence here is not proof of your knowledge, but proof of your ability and even more proof of your determination and of your vision. Your time at Oy will offer you extraordinary opportunities. You will make discoveries and you will discover things that are currently unknown unknowns. You will grow as scientists and you will grow as people. And equally important, you will have a lot of fun. These years will be the hardest, but also among the best ones of your lives. Of course, this is not your first experience in science. All of you have demonstrated your excellent and your skills and you all possess bachelors or mast's degrees already. But you will very quickly learn that a PhD is very different. Assaulting the utterly unexplored means that uncertainty will become something that you have to learn to work with and which in fact might even become your guide. If your research does not confuse you, you're probably not working on a sufficiently interesting problem. You will also discover that personal growth is just important as technical expertise. You will learn how to balance your success with humility, how to balance creativity with discipline, and even more important these days, how to balance powerful new ta to tools such as AI with your own critical judgments. And at you will experience the power of collaboration across disciplines, across cultures, and across borders. In fact, the spirit of borderless collaboration is one of the most remarkable aspects of academia. You are now part of a community of scholars from all around the world. Each bringing a unique perspective and unique expertise. Your mentors, your peers, and your colleagues are all here to support you and to learn from you as well. Choose your collaborators not only for their brilliance, but also for their generosity. And be generous yourselves. While I do not want to take too much time with this speech, I would like to briefly reflect on why your presence matters here so much. Unfortunately, we live at a time when the very foundations of the scientific method are being questioned more often than one would hope and when misinformation too often droughts out evidence. In this environment, we're especially grateful to have you with us. In times like these, our role is not only to create new knowledge. It's also to protect the integrity and to share it with clarity, with humility, and with care. And we are truly happy to know that you will be part of this effort. Your dedication to scientific rigor, the commitment to scientific truths, and your courage to ask the difficult questions will strengthen not only oyst but the global scientific community and society itself. Finally, remember that the coming years are more about than what you accomplish inside the lab. A healthy mind and body, nurtured by friendships, by hobbies, and by time spent admiring Okinawa's colorful underwater life, will be essential to your success and to your happiness. Your PhD is something that you do. It's not who you are. So today, we welcome you not only to a PhD program, but to a life of curiosity. The pursuit of knowledge that you're going to embark on is a privilege and using it wisely is a responsibility in a world that needs science more than ever. We are thrilled to have you here. Welcome to Hoy. Welcome to this extraordinary community. Thank you. [applause] Now let's turn to the students themselves. I mentioned earlier that we are welcoming the last portion of the class of 2025. These are students who started in January. Um I'd like to now call all of you here 2025 people to come to the stage. So first of all um from Chetcha Elisa Posttova [applause] we have two students from Ecuador Tammy Pastor and Juan. [applause] It wasn't so long ago that we had very very few South American but we are getting more and that's good to see from Germany. Nicholas Bourneshine [applause] I can see he's already made friends from India Sarapu Mandal. [applause] And now we have quite a few from Japan. Um, Kasumi Fail, [applause] Emily Itto, [applause] Marina Chikarashi, [applause] Satoshi Kobayashi, and Ume Takahashi. Um the relative size of the photographs up here is has no meaning. Uh from Pakistan, Muhammad Azim [applause] from Poland, Karolina Tarapata [applause] from Rossia, Tatiana Yavaruk, [applause] another one not here. and from the United States, Leo Krishinski. [applause] So, some of them aren't here because they're already off doing student things like conferences and so on. Uh, so welcome to the class of 2025. [applause] Finally, you're all here. Make the most of your time at Oy. Thank you for playing. Okay, now turning to the student introductions for the class of 2026. So for the first time in a long time, it gives me great pleasure to introduce a student from Australia. Um, Toshan Tan. [applause] So I was delighted to hear that Toshan is actually from Sydney, which is my hometown. Go Sydney. Um, we Australians don't normally say that, but in honor of that, I did actually wear my Australian motif. Um, what do you call these? Cuff links. It's a pair of thongs with the Aussie flag painted on it just to make him feel at home. The next from Austria, not Australia, is Anna Fuend [applause] from Brazil. Thiago Perabuko [applause] from China. Shuning Jang [applause] from Colombia. Andres Galindo [applause] from Hong Kong. Lo himong >> [applause] >> Sharp from India. Swati [applause] and Sumyadep Chakraorti [applause] from Indonesia. Yovin Sugo. [applause] Guys, you're all standing in the shadows. Come on a bit closer. from Israel, Doron Benjamin [applause] from Italy, Mateo Morel. [applause] Um, again, quite a few from Japan. Um, maybe you can all stay together as a group and we can count. Um, Aayuto Yashiro [applause] Hannah Sherid, [applause] Hikaru Yokamorei, [applause] Hiroshi Nonaka, [applause] Ki Nanjo, [applause] Kishimoto >> [applause] >> K. Hayakawa, [applause] Moy Ko, [applause] Reena Tokoyama, [applause] actually from Okinawa. Nice. Satuki Yoshida [applause] and another from Okinawa, Satar Shiro, [applause] Yui Hidaka, [applause] and Yuna Yamamoto. [applause] So, apparently we went in English alphabetical order by your first name. Never mind. Um, congratulations and welcome to Oy all of you. Moving on from Kazakhstan, Alte Koshimay [applause] from Mexico. Leonardo Gonzalez [applause] from the Philippines. Matthew Serna de Oko [applause] from Poland. Julia Zasada. [applause] Several this year from Russia. Alexandra Dennisovva, [applause] Amina Fatikova, [applause] Anastasia Netrosova, [applause] Jerasa, Geta, [applause] Aigor, Jerenko, [applause] Corona kva, sorry, [applause] [applause] and Olga Brova [applause] from South Korea. Donna Gim [applause] from Taiwan. L Tru Young [applause] from the United Kingdom. Noah Young [applause] from the United States. Brian Toe [applause] and Jonathan Horn. [applause] Also from the United States, Corbe Corin, [applause] Lauren Mardi, [applause] Patrick Orman, and Steven Fleming. [applause] And our last country of representation, Klinin Hang from Vietnam. >> [applause] >> and Minuan. [applause] Vietnamese names are what I have the worst time with, so apologies for those. But congratulations all of you and welcome to Oy. [applause] Um, one final clap, wave, and back to your six, please. [applause] So, as you can see, that's quite a few students from quite a few countries. Um, it's great to see how we have such an international uh campus here. so many different countries represented and we all get along and we all learn from each other culturally, intellectually and socially. Uh so please make opportunities as much as you can of all the opportunities that we offer for um cultural enrichment, diversity, joining clubs, making your contribution to the Oy community. Thank you so much and welcome to Oyst. So before we go, let's hear a fitting message from the students themselves. And as a representative of the Hoist Student Council, I'd like to call Diala Edit to the stage to make her presentation. [applause] >> Thank you. So um welcome everyone. I'm sure that many of you are feeling excited, perhaps a little uncertain about what lies ahead, maybe even nervous like me standing here as I give this speech. Um, so I want to tell you a quick story about my own journey that eventually led me to pursue a PhD and brought me to where I am today. Ever since I was a child, I have been fascinated by nature around me. So naturally, I decided to pursue a degree in biology. And although my parents were not exactly happy when they found about the uh possible yearly salary that I that came with it, they were still very supportive of my decision. And then I went on to get a master's degree, which only deepened my love for science. But something was still missing. I wanted to branch out from biology and explore different fields that were completely unknown to me, like physics, uh a subject that actually generally intimidated me back in my early years at university. And then I eventually realized that being intimidated by something isn't a reason to avoid it. It can actually be a chance to challenge yourself like what I'm doing giving this speech. Uh OE gave me that opportunity. It led me outside of my uh let me step outside of my comfort zone, explore fields far from my original background and work alongside people with completely different expertise. And that's uh what ultimately led me here pursuing a PhD in a field I would never would have imagined for myself when I started my academic journey. Looking back, I think that's what curiosity does. It pulls you somewhere you didn't plan to go. But curiosity alone doesn't get you through a PhD. I can tell you from my experience that if you're a little bit too curious, uh you can stray away from your actual research project and then you have to learn how to focus and then getting too focused makes you hyperfixated and it also stalls your PhD progress. But you'll learn how to balance the two. And I'm not going to stand up here and give you a marketing pitch about how amazing PhD life is because when I started mine, I thought it was going to be really easy. I thought I was gonna do it easily. Um, but I was wrong. Um, it can be very stressful, but it's a strange useful kind of stress. You're constantly being challenged, learning, discovering things about your research and also about yourself. And I even struggled at the start of my PhD and I'm not shy to say so. Why would I be? Struggling doesn't mean that you're incapable. It just sometimes means that you're stubborn enough to keep going, adaptable enough to change course when things don't work out. And you may get humbled quickly, but from from what I've seen and my friends and colleagues, PhD students are special. We're resilient. We're adaptable. We learned how to survive under conditions that sometimes seem less than ideal, a little bit like a cactus in a desert. So have faith in yourselves. And more importantly, remember that you're not alone. Don't be afraid to ask for help when you don't know what you're doing. I certainly have, and I have no shame in admitting that I've taken full advantage of the people around me. You're not expected to know everything because if you did, you've already have a PhD, right? Uh you're here to learn, ask questions, talk to your peers, your supervisors, um the people outside your field entirely because you're going to be surprised by how much you can pick up just by reaching out to them. A PhD will hopefully open a lot of doors for you. Of course, you may also find yourself a little bit overqualified for a few job openings, maybe more than a few, but at least you'll have a degree that proves your skills in an extremely specialized field that almost no one in your family will understand when you try to explain it to them. But the most important thing I want you to take away today is that your time here is about more than research. You'll not grow just as scientists, but as people. You'll build real connections, pick up new perspectives, and make memories that'll last well beyond your time here. And please remember where we are. We live on a beautiful island, so go and explore it. Touch some seagrass. Breathe the humid Okinawan air and go to the beach. Step away from your computer every once in a while. Your research matters. Your experiments matter. Your deadlines matter, but so does taking a break. So, as you start this new chapter, be curious, be persistent, be willing to struggle and learn and ask for help. Remember that you're part of a community and you don't have to do this alone. And make some friends. So, once again, welcome to Oy. Thank you. [applause] Thank you, Diala. It's always good to hear the perspective of a student, especially introducing more students. Uh when I look back, it's faded into the distance somewhere. I can't quite remember, but I do know I do know it was hard. So, um enjoy the next five years. Make the most of it. always offers you amazing opportunities, but it's up to you to take those opportunities and to find a challenging question that interests you, that contributes to society, that contributes to developing our broad scope of knowledge and and to make your PhD yours. So, with that, I'd like to say thank you all for coming to the welcome ceremony. Um, this concludes the the formal part of the ceremony. So thank you all. [applause]