Kyoto University

ETS's teacher, François Blanchard, received us in his research laboratories at the University of Kyoto, where he is doing research in physics.

Wednesday, April 27th, we went to the prestigious Kyoto University. We started by visiting the laboratory of Professor François Blanchard, who also teaches at ETS in the field of electrical engineering. In Japan, he studies terahertz waves and develops technologies that uses them.

Terahertz waves are part of the electromagnetic spectrum in the vicinity of the boundary between infrared and microwaves. These waves react primarily with water and metals, therefore, they are very useful in various fields. For example, in the biomedical field, these waves can distinguish several components in the body and thus enable better analysis, among others to detect cancer cells. Terahertz waves, not reacting with clothes or paper, have applications for airport security by enabling extremely fast analysis of an individual.

Research in Japan is mainly funded by the country unlike in Canada where most of the budget comes from businesses.

In the afternoon, we attended two interesting presentations at the iCeMS “Learning Lounge”. These presentations in which researchers talk about their project developments in English are meant to be accessible for comprehension. The first presentation was on nanotechnology and on the methods used to organize atoms without direct contact. The second was about malaria and techniques used to accelerate research to treat this disease.