New Report: Research stay at KU Leuven who celebrates its 600th anniversary

Kyoto University European Center provides various support to help young researchers gain research experience in Europe. With our ‘Reports by Scholars‘ we aim to encourage those considering traveling by hearing from people who are actually staying in Europe.

This time we look at the research stay of Tomoaki Nakatsuka, a first-year master’s student at the Graduate School of Engineering, in Leuven Belgium. He is involved in research investigating the impact of non-rubber components in natural rubber on physical properties.

KU Leuven and Kyoto University concluded Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and Student Exchange Agreement (SEA) in 2020, and in April 2023 after Covid-19, 13 researchers from the Science, Technology and Engineering Group at KU Leuven visited Kyoto with its vice president as head of the delegation. Together with KURA (Kyoto University Research Administration Office, now Kyoto University office of Research Acceleration), our European Center organized some matching events back then. Nakatsuka’s visit was made possible when Prof. Mizuno (Department of Chemistry, KU Leuven) who was a member of the delegation visited Nakatsuka supervisor Prof. Keiji Numata (Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University).