OCU held the "International Lectures for High School Students & Citizens" on Saturday September 3rd, 2016, at the 25th floor Conference Room of the Abeno Harukas Building. This was the first ever large-scale international lecture planned and held by OCU which was targeted at high school students and citizens. The main theme was "Quantum and Information" and two wonderful guest speakers in the related field were invited from world-leading universities. The conference room was filled with audience and many wore high school uniforms, listening to the lectures attentively.

VP Sakuragi

The venue was full with students and citizens

Prof. Takui

　The event started at 1:30pm with specially-appointed professor Takeji Takui as the MC. At first Vice President Hiroyuki Sakuragi gave an opening address and the lecture part followed.

Lecture 1.　Professor Seth Lloyd, MIT

Quantum Computers and Information Processing:
Quantum Computer Reality

Professor Lloyd, who confessed that he does not use PowerPoint Presentation slides so often, prepared many slides with hand-drawn funny (but strongly appealing) pictures for this lecture. With the aid of those pictures, he explained why Quantum Computers were created and how big data was processed with Quantum Computers in plain words so that the young audience could easily understand.

　
Introducing how quantum computer processes big data

Prof. Seth Lloyd

Lecture ２　Professor Christiane Timmel, Oxford University

Quantum Mechanics and Bird Migration：
Making the Invisible Visible ‒ Shedding Light on the Mystery of Magnetoreception

Professor Timmel introduced the mechanism of how migratory birds find the correct direction by feeling the Earth's magnetic field. Her presentation included many colorful graphics and the audiences attentively listened to her powerful lecture.

　
Prof. Christiane Timmel

Map shows the routes migratory birds travel
Why can birds fly such long distance without compass?

Special Guest: "Message for High School Students in Japan"　
by Dr. Michael Nobel

　Michael Nobel of the Nobel Foundation (OCU's Distinguished Professor)[Photo:right] presented a special message for Japanese high school students. From the historical perspective, he examined Japanese economic progress especially in the rapid growth era, symbolized by the reliability of Japanese car technology. However, now we live in a different phase and what the world seeks now is innovation. Dr. Nobel urged high school students to show interest in science in order to make our world a better place. He also emphasized that it is important to follow your intuition and try new things accordingly. He closed his speech with the following advice: firstly, read books, which is a "man-made great machine", secondly, study English to gain various information via other countries and internet.

Voices from the audience

Nobuho Hashimoto, Naoki Ogawa and Hiroki Inoue, third year students from Seifu-Nankai HS, listened to the lecture very attentively in the front row. "One of our Physics teachers gave us a brochure of this event. It looked fun and we decided to join. Today's lectures were actually related to what we really have interest in, so we were glad that we could be here today. Also, we were able to ask questions directly to the professors; we got a bit nervous but it went well." Urara Kamon, a second year student from Ohtani HS (Osaka) commented that "I saw a poster on the wall at my school. A physics teacher also recommended to attend this lecture, so together with my Science Club friends I decided to come. Of course the all-English lectures were challenging, but speakers' presentations were quite understandable and it was a great learning opportunity for me."

The lecture was broadcast via live-streaming system and accessed by many viewers.