Office of International Affairs Graduate School of Medcine Nagoya University

From September to end of October, I spent two rewarding months as a visiting researcher in the Department of Psychiatry, led by Professor Norio Ozaki. In these two months, I managed to gain extensive knowledge on neurodevelopmental disorders, which will definitely be of great help with my research on Slovenian children with autism spectrum disorders. The main aim of my visit to the Nagoya University was to additionally expand my knowledge of bioinformatics. However, besides learning a lot about this topic during my visit, I also managed to enhance my knowledge in the field of genetics of neuropsychiatric diseases. The most noteworthy part of my stay here in Japan that I will definitely never forget, are the willingness and kindness of my co-workers, especially since they offered to continuously help me by sharing their knowledge. I believe that without their help, I would definitely not progress as much. During my stay in Japan, I also had some free time, during which I decided to visit two very interesting and beautiful cities, Kyoto and Tokyo, which was another great experience for me. I enjoyed the beautiful and calming gardens of many temples and shrines in Kyoto, as well as walking through the crowded streets of the capital, Tokyo, which was also really amazing. Living in Japan was a great experience also in the sense of getting to know another culture, one quite different from ours. I found out that Japanese are hardworking, patient, and very nice people. I definitely wish to visit Japan again in the near future. Above all, I would like to kindly thank everyone in the Department of Psychiatry for welcoming and hosting me in their laboratory. Working with all of you was truly a charm and a very pleasant experience.

Fortunately, I had the opportunity to complete an internship at Nagoya University for my MD-PhD program. The laboratory that was hosting me was led by Professor Ohno and working in the field of Neurogenetics.

I directly felt how nice Japanese guys could be, and everyone in the laboratory were trying their best to make myself as comfortable and my integration as fast as possible. Indeed, Yamashita-sensei took me under his wing and offered to be my mentor during the internship. We worked together on Nifk Protein, a RNA binding protein involved in muscle cells differentiation.

As it was my first experiment abroad France, my scientific English was not perfect and could clearly be improved. After an eight-week internship, I can say without a doubt that the exchange enabled me to improve my scientific English level, allowing me to fully enjoy the lab experience.

As a beginner in the scientific world, this international internship provided me new scientific skills, techniques, that were unique to that lab, of course in the frame of the research project.

Moreover, a trip so far from home is also an opportunity to discover a completely different culture, food and way of life, which can have nothing but a positive influence on the rest of my life. How could I indeed forget the best sushi or miso-katsu –unique to Nagoya- I ate there?

Last but not least, I hope that in the future, foreign students will continue to take that wonderful opportunity kindly provided by Nagoya University.

I would thus like to thank the Department of Neurogenetics and the staff at Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine for providing me with the opportunity to undertake this lab experience.

I had a great opportunity and a privilege to stay at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Nagoya, and learn from professor Ozaki and professor Aleksić. I felt very welcome, from the first day all through the clerkship period, and I also felt as if I was a true part of the team. I had the opportunity to learn several methods used in the area of psychiatric genetics – from theoretical background through databases browsing, and finally to perform the actual experiments by myself. Every week I was able to attend the lab meetings, and to learn about the research currently being done in several domains of psychiatry. Also, I had the possibility to observe the clinical work – rounds and meetings, which gave me a great perspective of psychiatry practice in Japan. As a psychiatrist with several years of experience, I was able to see and note the differences that exist between the practice in Serbia and Japan, with a possibility to apply some new ideas into everyday work in my country. I also felt truly free to ask and to learn about anything that was of interest for me, as well as to further develop the scientific curiosity and creative thinking in psychiatry research. The value of this experience for me was immense, since I was able to get involved in some of the most recent developments when it comes to genetics in psychiatry.

Besides the professional part, I was able to travel around Japan – Nagoya has a central position in the mainland, so it is very easy to reach any of the most important cities in Japan.

Overall, for me this was an enriching experience, and I would highly recommend visiting University of Nagoya!