I attended and gave a talk at the Winnipeg Ultrasound Forum 2024 held at the University of Manitoba, Canada, from Monday, July 15 to Friday, July 26, 2024. This workshop was not just an international conference, but a gathering of many leading ultrasound researchers from around the world. The conference was very important to me because it was my motivation to get started in ultrasound research, and because it was an opportunity to study abroad at the University of Manitoba and, in this time, to meet fascinating researchers who continue to perform cutting-edge, excellent researches.

I started my research in ultrasound when I wrote a letter to Prof. John Page at the University of Manitoba, Canada, and went abroad to study for a year from 2004 (20 years ago). More precisely, my mentor at the time, Professor Emeritus Qui Tran-Cong-Miyata met Dr. Anatoliy Strybulevych of the John Page lab, who later became my friend, at a (Japanese) conference and introduced me through him.

I am now working on nanoparticles and micron-sized particles utilizing novel and unique ultrasound techniques. The background to this research has a lot to do with what I learned in Canada, where Professor Page’s lab worked with particles as small as sub-millimeters in order to study the wave phenomena with ultrasound in a very smart way. Professor Page’s lab is famous for being the first in the world to use sound waves to study metamaterials and Anderson localization, both of which have become popular recently. After I returned to Japan, many post-doctoral fellows and visiting researchers continuously visited his lab to study ultrasonic physics under Professor John Page.

This workshop was a conference where his former students and collaborators of the John Page Lab gathered at one place and interacted with each other. In terms of getting together at one time, it was a near-miracle. The two-week workshop began each morning with two speakers, followed by a review of papers and afternoons of collaborative experiments on several topics.  Although the scale of the experiments is quite large compared to the nano- and micron-sized particles I am studying, they were all very interesting as multiple scattering of sound waves and viscoelastic property analysis.

I would like to congratulate Prof. John Page for his many great achievements in ultrasound research and thank him for guiding many researchers, including myself. In addition, I would like to thank Dr. Benoit Tallon of the University of Sorbonne and Dr. Maxime LANOY of the University of Le Mans for organizing such a wonderful workshop. A personal highlight was the gathering of prominent researchers that I see in international journals. Although Dr. John Page has retired, his students and collaborators have continued his work in physics, chemistry, food, medicine, and many other fields.

Another stimulating experience for me this time was that through my encounters with foreign researchers, I was made to think about the state of research and education in Japan. When we are young, we tend to be preoccupied with tasks such as university credits, graduation, and job hunting because we cannot easily see the future. On the other hand, for example, finding a job at the age of 24 after graduating with a master’s degree is still in the early stages of life, so finding a job itself should not be the goal. In that sense, I thought again that it would be good to not get caught up in finding a job, but rather, after finishing the doctoral program, to further explore the world as a post-doctoral fellow overseas and make his/her life more meaningful with a broader perspective as well.

It is nice to become a useful person by working for a company, but isn’t it also important to move with one’s own interest to explore a new world, to make one’s curiosity one’s job, and to create new technologies by oneself (rather than being a cog in one company), rather than doing research for a company (rather than waiting for work orders as compensation for receiving a salary)? It is not easy to talk about such things when talking with Japanese, but when talking with researchers from other countries, stories of more diverse and hopeful adventures come up. This time, I remembered that I was the same way 20 years ago. Now there is a doctoral support system (where you can get a doctoral degree with free tuition and even a salary) in Japan. I, too, would be happy if there are even more people who have hope for the future.

Tomo (Dr. Tomohisa NORISUYE)