Released October 28, 2008
BOZEMAN -- Normally, Jared Nelson wouldn't stand out in a crowd, but this past summer was not exactly normal for the Montana State University doctoral student.
That's because Nelson spent two months of his summer studying with snow scientists at one of the world's largest and most advanced subzero laboratories in Nagaoka, Japan.
"The biggest culture shock was always standing out," the 33-year-old New Hampshire native said. "But the life experience alone, of spending two months in Japan, helped me get over that shock pretty quickly."
Nelson's out-of-country experience came courtesy of the East Asian and Pacific Summer Institutes program, supported by the National Science Foundation and Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science. The program gives U.S. science and engineering graduate students international research experience in the hopes of encouraging collaboration that will benefit both the students and science in general.
Over the summer, about 100 students from across the U.S. visited labs in Australia, China, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan.
For Nelson, who studies the relationship between snow crystals and the strength of snow in order to learn more about the causes of avalanches, Nagaoka's Institute of Snow and Ice Studies -- home to the world's largest snow simulation lab at its branch in Shinjo -- was the perfect choice.
"While the research I performed is in a different direction from what our group is pursuing here at MSU, some of the research and analytical methods will improve our techniques," Nelson said.
The Japanese approach to science was almost overwhelming, Nelson said. In Nagaoka, located north of Tokyo, he and his Japanese colleagues collected more than 8,000 images of snow crystals. Each of those images had to be carefully processed before they could be used to estimate snow strength.
It was far more data than Nelson would have collected for an experiment of his own design. Scientists in the U.S. normally look at one parameter at a time in an experiment, Nelson said, taking time between experiments to analyze the data. The Japanese researchers he worked with looked at many parameters at once by running many experiments simultaneously.
"We collected a mountain of data and I had no idea how we would ever sort through all of it," he said.
But a meticulous, systematic approach to processing all those images helped the researchers get through all the data smoothly and taught Nelson a few things he can use to streamline his own experiments back home.
Nelson's advisor, civil engineering professor Ed Adams, said the connections grad students make when they study abroad will help later on in their careers.
"Some of the people you meet over there, you might be working with them in 30 years," Adams said. "Plus, it's interesting to have friends around the world."
Adams would know. As a graduate student, he worked with Atsushi Sato, who at the time held a postdoctoral position in the U.S. Sato is now the director of the Institute of Snow and Ice Studies in Japan. Over the years, Adams has made several trips to Japan, and the scientists he's met have since become his collaborators and his friends.
"We can certainly learn from other scientists, and there are some very good scientists in other countries," Adams said.
Nelson's research trip to Japan comes just in time. On Oct. 31, MSU will be opening its own SubZero Science and Engineering Research Facility, a 2,700-square-foot complex of cold rooms and equipment designed to make Bozeman a hub for cold research.
"Japan has some of the best facilities in the world," Nelson said. "And this trip was a good opportunity to start building a bridge. Hopefully, I've brought some of what I've learned back to help shorten our learning curve in using our new facilities."
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http://www.montana.edu/cpa/news/nwview.php?article=6435
Contacts: Jared Nelson, jared.nelson1@myportal.montana.edu
Ed Adams, 406-994-6122, eda@ce.montana.edu