In November 2023, Prof. Michael J. Schöning from Aachen University of Applied Sciences (FH Aachen) spent a fruitful month at Waseda University as Visiting Professor, conducting educational and research activities. During his stay, he gave lectures to students and scientific staff on chemical/biosensing and related disciplines, such as analytical chemistry, biotechnology, engineering and nano/microsystem technology. Also, he gave an overview of one of his main research projects at the Institute of Nano-and Biotechnologies (FH Aachen).

Supervision of students

Prof. Schöning also supervised several Waseda students, including students from Prof. Homma’s lab, who hosted Prof. Schöning.
"For the student presentations and discussions, I was impressed by the excellence of their scientific work, the width and depth of the research activities they are working on, the high level of English skills (especially, in comparison to other Japanese universities I had experience with in the past), the kindness of the whole team and the very welcome working atmosphere,” Professor Schöning commented. “In particular, to my impression, most of the students command on bright mind, are highly interested and motivated. I had very fruitful discussions with them, and I was able to give them advice and suggestions on on-going research including experiments and data analysis. For the future, I am eager to know, whether this could lead to a further improvement of their experimental research results.” 

Building "Bridges" between the labs

During Prof. Schöning's stay at Waseda, plans were discussed for a PhD student from Prof. Homma's lab to embark on a research stay at FH Aachen - a first-ever personal scientific exchange between the two institutions. Prof. Schöning emphasized that this exchange, “is in my opinion very important to build 'bridges' between the two institutions". He had frequent discussions with the student to shape their research plan at FH Aachen, and Prof. Schöning's lab team also joined via video conferencing to ensure seamless collaboration.

Future collaboration plan

"Nowadays, networking within the scientific community seems to be getting more and more important: multi-disciplinary research is one of the driving forces to guarantee activities with high innovation impact (which might be also helpful in receiving funding),” Prof. Schöning emphasizes, “at the same time, multi-disciplinary research might also attract students in the future." He shared his idea to "connect" Waseda University with other Japanese universities within his network too.