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Subaru Graduates Receive Awards

June 27, 2008

We introduce two doctorate students, Masahiro Konishi and Satoshi Mayama who recently received the award for their outstanding research and doctral thesis.


Subaru Research Intern
Masahiro Konishi

- What kind of award did you receive?
It was an award from Tohoku University in Japan which honors a student whose doctoral thesis research was significantly brilliant. The focuses of my doctoral thesis were observational study of distant galaxies and the development of MOIRCS, which was crucial to the completion of my thesis.

- What was the memorable experience so far?
After I came to Subaru Telescope as a funded student, I was engaged with the development of the MOIRCS instrument for almost two years. After that, our group repeated the test or science observations, and I compiled them in my doctral thesis. I obtained extensive experience because I participated the MOIRCS development group.

- What is your resolution for the future?
In my thesis, I investigated properties of galaxies of 8 billion years ago and compared them with those in the local universe. For the future, I will go on looking into galaxies in another era, and want to unveil how galaxies like ours we see now, have "evolved" up to the present.




JSPS fellow
Satoshi Mayama

- Can you tell us about the award you received?
I received two awards. The first one is the “Nagakura research incentive award ” and the second one is “The Graduate University for Advanced Studies research award”. The first prize is instituted for promoting the excellent research and pioneering a pacesetting discipline. My research is about “infrared observation of exoplanet and protoplanetary disk by using Subaru Telescope”.

- What was the memorable experience so far?
I conducted the observation under high resolution with application of Adaptive Optics and CIAO to the telescope. Under an observation like this, it is important to obtain reliable data where atmospheric motion is cancelled as much as possible. I remember that I acquired lots of experience that I now can use to make a decent and quick judgment no matter what situation comes up during observation.

- What is your resolution for the future?
I will proceed with observation to solve the origin or generality of planets including the ones in our solar system. What I hope is to make a contribution so that we will be able to answer questions, such as, “Do earth-like planets really exist?”



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