Personal History

Realizing the importance of environment and people around me to shape my personal growth during adolescence

I spent my early years in a countryside of Japan as a curious girl. I grew up in the least populated prefecture in Japan, Tottori prefecture. To be honest, I don’t remember much from back then. But I remember I wanted my parents to care for me more than my younger brother, so I tried hard to get their attention. I wasn’t really into studying or sports. But I loved and was good at observing and understanding things around me. For example, I liked playing medal games which is a type of arcade game in Japan where we can win metal coins, similar to arcade tokens. I strategically observed other players and machines to figure out which machine might let me win. I enjoyed observing how people behaved, guessing what they might be thinking. I liked thinking about what I should do based on those observations and thoughts. The best moment for me was when my strategy worked as I imagined and I won the game.

Realizing the importance of environment and people around me to shape my personal growth during adolescence

As I grew older, I realized that the environment and people around me had a big impact on my personal growth. This became clear during my teenage years. I got into playing field hockey (not ice hockey!). When I was in elementary school, my best friend joined the hockey team, so I decided to join too. In my hometown, hockey wasn’t very popular. We didn’t have a strong school. However, there were schools in the neighboring prefecture that were very strong at hockey. Based on past results in competitions, I didn’t truly believe I could beat them in competitions and lacked confidence in my skills. Still, I wanted to get better and win, so I practiced hard every day. But from elementary school to my second year of middle school, I didn’t feel I was ready to compete on a national level.

Then something important to my life happened in my third year of middle school. A teacher/coach who had experience leading a team to win the hockey national competition moved to our school from the school in the neighboring prefecture. He completely changed my life. From that moment he moved to our school, everything changed. He taught us how to approach hockey differently, how to practice better, and even how to live my daily life in a new way. Even though my teammates were the same, his influence made us all think and play differently. I started practicing from the morning to evening on top of my regular practice. After about six months of this intense practice and learning, my confidence grew. I felt that I could compete with the best in the country. Even though I couldn’t win in a big competition that summer after all, the experience of practicing so hard and the changes in my life and hockey skills taught me something very important: where we are and who we’re with can make a huge difference in our own growth.

When I started thinking about my career after graduation from high school, I needed to make a big decision. By that time, I had been focused on hockey for a long time. One option for me was to continue to play hockey at university, aiming to be a professional hockey player. Another option was to study hard to take a university entrance exam and join an undergraduate program in the area I am interested in studying. While many of my friends had been preparing for the entrance exam well in advance, I had mostly been playing hockey. I didn’t have much time left – I only had a few months for the preparation. My teacher told me it would be tough for me to get into a university I wanted to. So I knew that the second option would be very challenging. However, I was intrigued by that hard challenge and the future opened by studying at university. I decided to take the second option – study very hard and take a university entrance exam. After retiring from playing hockey, my extreme study days started.

For my major, I decided to study mathematics, which was the subject I loved the most for a long time. For university, I decided to apply to Nara Women’s University, even though my teacher told me that it was a very difficult choice. I worked hard and successfully got into my first-choice university (I later found out I barely passed – if I had made one more mistake, I might not have been admitted).

Diving deep into math during undergraduate

I joined Nara Women’s University, which is the home of many female students who love math and science, just like me. During that time, women in STEM field were rare, especially in the countryside, so I always felt that I was different from others. This feeling was uncomfortable in Japan which has a strong collectivistic culture. However, in this new environment, I felt more accepted. I began deeply studying math with a lot of women who shared my interests. But math at the university level turned out to be extensively hard. I used to enjoy math, solving problems with numbers and equations, but now it was about learning theories with abstract concepts. I started struggling with it because I could not find the connection between math and real-life applications and could not intuitively understand the meaning and value of learning it.

At the university, there was no hockey team, so I started playing lacrosse. It was a fun experience and I made great friends through it. We even won a big competition. My university life was a mix of struggle in math and fun in lacrosse.

When my undergrad study got close to the end, I decided to look for an industry job rather than going to graduate school. I didn’t have a strong interest in anything specific industry, but I wanted to find a job where I could use my math skills. I learned that many graduates from the math department become a system engineer (SE) who uses the logical thinking skills obtained by learning math. I applied for various SE positions and got offers from some companies (though I didn’t get into my top choice).

Discovering my passion for data science and becoming interested in international experiences while working as a data scientist

Upon joining as an SE to my first company, I discovered my role was in a new field (at that time) called Data Science. The assigned job was to create bidding algorithms for an online advertising system known as Demand Side Platform (DSP). This job required skills in data analysis and machine learning. Based on my math background, the company thought I would be a good fit for this role. It was a completely new experience, but this transition was transformative for my career. Data Science applied math to real issues, which was the connection between math and practical application I had been looking for throughout my undergrad study. I loved this job. Unveiling insights from big data felt like discovering buried treasures in a big mountain.

While working as a Data Scientist, I got the opportunity to represent my department at an international digital marketing conference held in Japan, which exposed me to the broader world. Listening to speakers from overseas made me realize there was so much more to explore, motivating me to learn English to gain international perspectives.

This realization and motivation made me decide to move to an environment where I can use English more frequently and interact with international employees. I moved to Rakuten, where I continued working as a Data Scientist. My role involved analyzing data from merchants on Rakuten’s e-commerce platform to build strategies for boosting their sales. The main reason for joining Rakuten was its unique environment. English was the internal official language, and the company had a strong international presence. My life in this new environment further motivated me to learn English hard and nurtured my hope to work internationally.

I thought that this was the perfect working environment, but, over time, I started questioning the meaning of my work. My daily tasks were demanding, and I struggled with a misalignment between the company’s goals and my personal interests. I felt that the vision of this company did not align with my passion, which made me unmotivated toward my job. But I was not exactly sure what my passion was at that time. This realization led me to introspect about my true passions and what I really wanted to do.

While exploring my passions, I considered starting my own business and applied for Tottori Startup Camp, an event supporting aspiring entrepreneurs in my hometown. Through this event, I felt lacking in a clear sense of self and purpose, which affected my commitment to any business idea. At the event, I met with Hiromi Okuda, a Japanese female entrepreneur and a person who changed my life. To find my true self and what I want to do, she encouraged me to attend a training held in Silicon Valley. Feeling that this was the opportunity I had been seeking, I promptly decided to participate, despite the significant cost (about double my monthly salary at the time). This decision marked a significant turning point in my life.

Deciding to go to the US through training at the Women’s Startup Lab

In January 2018, I traveled to Silicon Valley for the first time to attend the training. At that point, I was more worried about my limited English skills than excited about the experience of being in the U.S. I joined a group of 10 participants, including myself, for the training. During the training, we introspected deep into our lives, reflecting on everything from childhood onward, aiming to discover our core being. Night after night, I remember lying in bed, puzzled about what truly made my core being. Local entrepreneurs also participated as mentors in the training. While I couldn’t fully grasp their discussions at the time, their enthusiasm and powerful words left an impression on me, providing a surge of energy. Although I didn’t fully uncover my core being through this training, I returned with something even more valuable. It was the unmoved desire to go to the US. I wanted to live in this thrilling environment, communicate with the people there, and experience entirely new aspects of the world. My excitement led me to decide that I had to find a way to go to America.

While the decision to go to the US was made, how to go about it and what to do there remained unclear to me. However, my strong passion and excitement pushed me forward without a clear plan. My initial idea was to utilize the network of the global company Rakuten to secure a position at Rakuten’s U.S. branch. However, given my English proficiency at the time and the available positions, I couldn’t find a job in the U.S. that was aligned with my interests. I considered waiting for any opportunity to arise at Rakuten, or starting with any job in the U.S. and then promoting as I gain more experience. But I felt that this path would take too much time. Instead, I believed that by investing in myself and polishing my skills, I could more quickly achieve what I desired in the US. Thus, I reached the conclusion of pursuing a graduate degree in the U.S. By studying at a university, I could pave my way to stay in the US and gain expertise in a short time in a field that genuinely interested me. I made this decision just a few days after returning from the training, and I submitted my resignation letter to Rakuten the next day. While some might see this as a hasty decision, I believed (and had confidence) that this path would make me grow significantly and bring me to a better place to live happier.

Starting in March 2018 after leaving Rakuten, I dedicated myself to studying English for the US graduate school admission. From morning till night, I focused on preparing for the TOEFL exam, aiming to score at least 100 points as quickly as possible. English had never been my favorite subject; during my undergrad study, I used to joke that I would finish my life without studying English. Thus, studying English daily was not easy for me. However, I had a strong enough passion to overcome that challenge and achieve the target score within the deadline.

Another challenge was selecting a field of study that would align with my passions. Although I wanted to go to the US, I hadn’t yet clarified what I wanted to learn or do. My experiences in data science and interactions with a supervisor at Rakuten played a significant role in helping me decide.

As I dived deep into machine learning and AI as a data scientist, I often became disappointed by AI. At the time, the world was buzzing about how AI, exemplified by AlphaGo, would soon surpass human intelligence. However, in practice, AI was nowhere near capable of independently conducting data analysis tasks I did daily at Rakuten. Instead, I began to appreciate human intelligence, cognition, and learning abilities. This realization ignited my curiosity to understand how humans think and learn, and brought the interest in creating AI capable of human-like thinking and learning.

Another realization stemmed from my supervisor at Rakuten, who was exceptionally intelligent in various ways. In meetings, I presented data analysis results and my interpretation to him. He would then respond with incredibly deep and interesting insights. Despite looking at the same data and graphs, he consistently derived fascinating observations and provided clear explanations. This difference between his and my abilities significantly intrigued me.

However, I noticed that he had acquired his skills over time through experience and couldn’t easily explain his thought processes. His knowledge was internal and inaccessible. I wanted to understand how his brain worked to produce such outputs and learn his skills. But it was just impossible without understanding the process within his brain.

These two interests converged in the field of computational cognitive science, a branch of psychology. This field uses machine learning and data science to understand cognitive processes, including human learning, and tries to leverage this understanding to the development of AI. This field resonated perfectly with my interests in human learning processes and my expertise in data analysis and machine learning. Therefore, I decided to pursue cognitive science studies.

After applying to several US universities, I decided to enroll in the Master’s program in psychology at New York University, starting in the fall of 2019.

Finding my interests in neuroscience while studying cognitive science at New York University

During my pursuit of the master’s degree, I got a new insight: the intersection of my interests and expertise may be better found within the field of neuroscience.

The initial phase of my NYU journey was full of challenges to adapt to English-taught courses and a new life in the US. In addition to these challenges, there was another challenge awaited – finding a research laboratory. NYU’s Psychology Master program offered flexibility, allowing students to complete their degrees through coursework and exams alone. Yet, my passion for cognitive science drove me to seek hands-on research experience. I reached out to professors to find a suitable lab. As a student new to both English and US cultures, articulating my interests and skills in a convincing manner was a very difficult task. The difficulty increased as I dived deeply into each lab’s research focus – a challenge compounded by my limited experience in the field. Furthermore, the scarcity of labs, opened positions to master’s students and aligned with my research interests, made the challenge further difficult.

After experiencing several failures, I got a chance to meet with Prof. Roozbeh Kiani, and this was a pivotal moment for me. His lab studies information processing in the brains of monkeys. I was presented with a unique opportunity to analyze monkey’s behavior, specifically related to their decision-making processes. Although I was initially more interested in studying human behavior, I decided to go in this new direction. This decision marked a turning point, influencing my future career trajectory. I’m sincerely grateful to Roozbeh for giving me the chance to be in his lab, even though my English wasn’t very good back then.

Coming soon!

Reaching the environment that I have been looking for a long time as a PhD student at CMU

Coming soon!