OUAVM hosted a liberal arts lecture meeting at the Obihiro Citizens Culture Hall on July 11, 2019, featuring Dr. Hiroshi Amano, a 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics laureate and a professor and director of the Center for Integrated Research of Future Electronics (CIRFE) at the Institute of Materials and Systems for Sustainability (IMaSS), Nagoya University.
The event, open to the public, was the third such gathering intended to provide local residents with an opportunity for lifelong learning and exchanges with OUAVM in addition to encouraging OUAVM students to develop a broad understanding of liberal arts as they pursue their study and enjoy their campus life.
At the outset of the lecture meeting, OUAVM President Kiyoshi Okuda delivered an address, expressing his hope that the lecture would be intellectually stimulating for both OUAVM students and local residents and spark their interest in interdisciplinary fields they had seldom explored.
Dr. Amano talked for roughly an hour about how he was able to create gallium nitride crystals that would make it possible to fabricate blue LEDs after repeating experiments more than 1,500 times and how he is now working to achieve more than 100% energy efficiency based on renewable energy.
During his lecture, Dr. Amano told the audience how we could contribute to the world—even if we lack exceptional talent—by concentrating single-mindedly on our work, stressing the importance of absorbing ourselves in what we do.
This event, attended by roughly 1,000 people, including OUAVM students and faculty members and local residents, provided a rare glimpse into the development of blue LEDs and the receiving of a Nobel Prize.
After the event, Dr. Amano toured our campus, including the Industrial Animal Clinical Research Building, with our staff.
Many respondents to our post-event questionnaire for OUAVM students suggested that they believed that what they learned from Dr. Amano would be useful not just in physics, but also in their own lives and that the event was an opportunity to review their values and ways of thinking.
