Graduate School of Science welcomed three Russian scientists: Prof. Konstantin Ivanov and Prof. Matvey Fedin from International Tomography Center and Director & Prof. Elena G. Bagryanskaya from Novosibirsk Institute of Organic Chemistry as the speakers for the International Seminar held on Nov16th, 2017. OCU PR Office conducted an interview with Prof. Bagryanskaya, who also serves as the Russian representative of the Japan–Russia Research Cooperative Program with Prof. Kazunobu Sato of OCU, the Japanese representative.

Prof. Bagryanskaya, one of the leading researchers in electron spin science, first met with Japanese scholars at the JSPS’s international joint research with Tohoku University begining in 1996. Since then, she has been actively involved Japanese researchers via various projects, including Prof. K. Sato and his lab members.

She is a busy scientist as well as a busy grandma! She has five grandchildren and on holidays she often takes them out to enjoy music and theaters. By the way, how did she decide to be a scientist? “Well, I was born in Kyrgyzstan, locates in Central Asia near China. My family had seven kids; five boys and two girls. Since young, I loved mathematics. When I was about middle school, I took distance-learning course provided by Novosibirsk State University…they provided such courses for motivated youth. Then I was deeply interested in Physics and I entered that university, majoring in Physics. Over time, my research topics has been shifted but I believe in the basic joy of being a scientist, that is, to have the possibility of becoming the Almighty...to find something never existed, to find nobody found before…such an exciting challenge. What we study now is also a leading-edge molecular spin technology applicable for quantum computer, which is awaited practical use in the near future. With Prof. Sato’s great spin technique, I hope this collaboration will be successful.”

Finally she kindly gave us the following message for young college students in Science: “Sometimes it is hard to repeat boring experiments, especially when you have hard time getting good results. However, do the experiments carefully. You might find something new and amazing. Nature plays with us!”