Dear Dr Nukina,
It is almost one year since I left your laboratory. I hope you are well. The four years that I stayed at RIKEN have had an important impact on my life, and I would like to express my thanks to you and all of my former RIKEN colleagues.
I joined your laboratory in October 2007 when it was first launched. I still remember well the days in that laboratory and our very kind colleagues. The scientific training I received at RIKEN was very valuable to me. RIKEN has a wonderful atmosphere for its researchers, and so many excellent scientists contribute to its culture and to science at an international level. It is a place where I received solid training and could develop my own scientific thinking. Everybody worked hard, and I could get help from anybody if I wanted to learn more. RIKEN and you gave me so much help in my research career, even after I came back to China to start my new laboratory at the University of Science and Technology of China.
In 2004, I secured a collaboration fund from RIKEN, and the grant helped me to run my new laboratory and further develop the collaboration between our two laboratories. RIKEN is a Japanese institute, but it has an international style. There, I met researchers from India, Russia and Korea, and our shared experience in your laboratory gave us a strong connection — some of us have even now established further collaborations. Dr Nihar Jana, an Indian scientist who worked in your lab at that time, is now running his own laboratory at the National Brain Research Centre in India, and is in regular communication and collaboration with us. RIKEN is a bridge that connects the scientists who once worked there.
Besides the research atmosphere, my life at RIKEN is also a very good memory for me. Two assistants, Miss Taniguchi and Miss Mizuno, gave me and other foreigner visitors a great deal of help. When I stayed at RIKEN, they helped both myself and my wife, who still tells me how much she likes Japan and the RIKEN staff. She too hopes very much to visit Japan again some day.
One of my fondest memories is when you and other members of our laboratory visited my wife in Narimasu hospital just after the birth of our child. The lovely toy you gave is still with us, passed on to our next child, even after moving several times and to several different countries. I hope one day that I will get the chance to take my family to visit Japan once again and to meet with you, Miss Taniguch, Miss Mizuno and our other friends at RIKEN.
My kind colleagues at RIKEN, the busy research days, the enjoyable RIKEN life and the beautiful cities in Japan, all gave me unforgettable memories. I hope I will one day return to visit you in the near future.
Best regards to you and your colleagues,
Guanghui Wang
Laboratory of Neuropathology
School of Life Sciences
University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei
Anhui, China
