On September 22nd, 2021, Yokohama National University participated in “Sakura Science High School Program Online University Visit” hosted by Japan Science and Technology (JST). In this program, JST invites promising high school students from Asian countries, and they experience Japanese cutting-edge technology and exchange opinions with the scientists. This program aims to strengthen the relationship between Japan and Asian countries through their future study or research activities in Japan. YNU has accepted high school students from Asian countries for the program. However, due to the COVID-19, the program for this year was held in online. There were a total of 2,646 participants from 31 countries and regions, such as Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, and Taiwan.

■Introduction of YNU
In the first session of this program, two student international volunteers gave a presentation about the overview of YNU. There were a lot of questions from the participants about the study or research activities at YNU and the support system for international students such as scholarship information, showing the high level of interest in studying in Japan.

■Online Laboratory Visit
After the introduction of YNU, we showed some videos which introduce research activities of Prof. HASEGAWA Makoto, Associate Prof. HIGUCHI Takehiro, and Associate Prof. OTA Hiroki from the Faculty of Engineering Sciences, and Prof. HOSODA Akira, Prof. SUZUKI Takayuki, and Associate Prof. KIKUMOTO Mamoru from the Faculty of Urban Innovation. In these videos, they talked about the reason for starting their research or explained the experimental instruments, and the participants could deepen their understanding about the research activities of the professors.

■Q&A Session
In the Q&A session, the professors who were introduced in Online University Visit answered the questions from the participants directly. Since there were many technical questions, the participants could deepen their understanding more about the professors’ research activities. At the last part of this Q&A session, a representative international student from the Graduate School of Engineering Sciences answered the questions about his study life in Japan.

Comments from participants:
?Thank you so much for this program. It was really informative and so many things to learn.
?Thank you for this event! Definitely thinking about studying at YNU!

We hope that this event will be the opportunity for the participants to consider studying at YNU in the future.

The archive will be available in JST’s website .