My Research life as a postdoctoral scholar at Northwestern University

Edited by Li Yang, a former PhD student in Kuwano Lab

It has been a year since I moved to the USA and working as a postdoctoral scholar at Northwestern University, located in Evanston, a suburb of Chicago. One of my favorite aspects why I am keen to this University is that its campus is super beautiful, one of the most beautiful campuses among all Universities in the US because it is by the Lake Michigan. Especially in the summer time, the view at the lakeside is amazing, green grassland and purely blue lake. Taking a bottle of coffee and sitting on the grass can always swipe off the tiredness and unhappiness of a day’s hard work.

The food here is not that tasty for me, I guess for most Asian people as well because of different eating and cooking style. So I usually cook on weekends, mainly Chinese cuisine. It is not difficult to get Chinese condiments in Chinese food groceries as there is a lot of Chinese living in Chicago, where there is a Chinatown, similar to the one in Yokokama.

Over the pass year, I have also been travelling to other cities of USA, such as Chicago, Philadephia, New York, and Houston. As some of the biggest cities in the world, they are highly devloped and populated, with lots of skyscrapers in downtown area, looking modern and splendid. There are also some historical spots such as Chicago Art Museum, New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, Statue of Liberty. USA is also famous for its national parks with beautiful natural landscape. I plan to go some during this Christamas.

As for my research, I have been mainly working on particle breakage mechanics, which I can apply my expertise I acquired from my PhD study to. I went to Argonne National Lab to conduct sychronized X-ray tomography for the micromachanical investigation on the shape evolution during particle breakage events. I also use DEM simulations to explore the effect of particle size and shape on the strain energy. My current avisor is very helpful and group members are also very nice to work with. I hope that I can make some good outputs here and continue working as a researcher.