科学の楽しさを、子どもから大人まで。
東北の博士学生がつくる遊びと対話

Making Science Personal: PhD Students’ Challenge for Children and Adults in Tohoku

“The truth is—the theme of this game was radiation.”
When we reveal this after families have finished playing our board game, the eyes of the children and their parents light up. “Wait—it wasn’t something scary?” Because they have just been absorbed in play, radiation becomes “personal” to them for the very first time.
We are HagiiZ, a 33-member student club led by PhD students at Tohoku University. Our philosophy: create places where people can engage with science as something personal—through play and dialogue. We are taking on four challenges: (1) outreach classes at high schools, (2) board games for learning science through play, (3) an escape game that simulates the failures of inquiry, and (4) science cafés at a guesthouse. Our funding goal is ¥500,000. We would be grateful for your support.
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It All Started with “What Does a PhD Student Actually Do?”

I am Taichi Miyagishi, a PhD student researching nuclear and fusion materials at the Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University. Every day I face the invisible “unknowns” of what happens inside a material when radiation strikes it.
Outside the lab, I am often asked: “So what does a PhD student actually do?” Every time I answer, I realize how little society knows about what PhD students work on. The distance between researchers and society is greater than we think.
There is another experience I cannot forget. My research relates to nuclear energy. In Tohoku, which lived through the earthquake and the nuclear accident, many people freeze at the word “radiation”—thinking stops at “scary,” and hearts close before any numbers can be discussed. That is not their fault; perhaps science has simply never offered them a first encounter that isn’t frightening. I have long asked myself what I, a student of nuclear materials, can do.



The turning point was my training at CoSTEP, Hokkaido University’s professional program in science and technology communication. Pushing “correct knowledge” at people one-way changes neither feelings nor behavior; people truly start thinking only when science becomes personal. What is needed is not a grand lecture but a “place” where science can become one’s own—and the person sitting next to you there should be a PhD student, closer in age and standing to society than a distinguished professor. In fall 2024 I founded HagiiZ with fellow PhD students, and every time we discussed nuclear power—with high schoolers in the library of Kasukabe High School in Saitama, or with citizens at the footbath of Tsuchiyu Onsen in Fukushima—that conviction grew stronger.
What turned conviction into a sense of mission was my research stay at MIT starting in February 2026. More than the world-class research environment, what stayed with me was how PhD researchers are relied on as a matter of course outside the university, and how close science and citizens are. I felt frustrated by the gap with Japan—and I understood: this landscape will not be changed by one brilliant researcher. It changes only if we, who are in PhD programs now, create “places” everywhere. One voice has limits—so let’s do it together.



In the spring after my return, with HagiiZ as the base, we launched the “Science Event Club HagiiZ,” now joined by undergraduates—a team of 33 across different majors and years. In June we held our first citizens’ science café at a guesthouse in Sendai. Watching 14 travelers and locals share one table and talk about science and research as something close to everyday life, our conviction turned into passion. Places that make science personal can be created. These four challenges are that passion given form.



 

 Four “Places,” Our Track Record, and Use of Funds

With your support, over roughly two years (FY2026–FY2027), we will create “places that make science personal” in four forms.

 

1. Outreach classes at high schools

We will visit five high schools across Tohoku. PhD students who sat in the same classrooms only a few years ago speak candidly about career choices, failures, and the joys and struggles of research, combined with group work and dialogue connecting school subjects to society. “Studying for exams” becomes “learning that leads to my own future.”

 

2. Board games for learning science through play 

 We are developing three games that liken radiation to familiar things. They have already been exhibited at Sendai–Miyagi Science Day and at a science event hosted by the Kahoku Shimpo newspaper, and played by more than 300 parents and children. The design never pushes knowledge: the theme is revealed only after everyone has finished playing. We will refine them toward school adoption and general sale, then keep developing games on themes beyond radiation.

 

3. An escape game simulating the failures of inquiry

A puzzle-based teaching tool that lets high school students deliberately experience—and escape from—typical pitfalls of inquiry-based learning, such as collecting data to fit a predetermined conclusion. As PhD students who fail every day, we are uniquely placed to build it, and we will test it in real classrooms.

 

4. Science cafés at a guesthouse

Expanding from our first café (14 participants) to 10+ per year. Locals and travelers from Japan and abroad think together over one table about Tohoku-rooted themes such as disaster preparedness, and about cutting-edge science that PhD students can uniquely convey. Our organizing know-how will be published free online.

Across all four activities we will measure impact with pre/post questionnaire surveys, and give back through both academic papers/presentations and plain-language reports for participants.

 

Use of funds (goal: ¥500,000) 

 travel for outreach classes and classroom trials ¥220,000; game production ¥110,000; conference travel ¥60,000; café venues ¥50,000; printing, surveys, and PR ¥60,000. As a guide: ¥3,000 prints worksheets for one class; ¥5,000 covers one café venue; ¥44,000 delivers a full outreach class to one high school. (Figure below is in Japanese.)

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Growing 500 People’s “Personal Science” into Tohoku’s Culture

Our direct goals: 8+ schools (outreach plus adoption) and 500+ cumulative participants. Success means a 20%+ improvement in scientific-understanding scores on pre/post surveys; two finished teaching tools with 10 adoptions by schools and companies; and 10+ cafés per year with 5+ partner venues. We will analyze the results through to conference presentations and papers—leaving a model anyone can verify and reproduce, never just “we did it.”
Three ripple effects. First, publishing our materials and manuals lets teachers and students nationwide open the same places in classrooms we cannot reach—reducing teachers’ workload and narrowing educational gaps. Second, learning about disaster preparedness and radiation born in Tohoku spreads across Japan and the world through travelers at the guesthouse. Third, children who meet PhD students as they really are see researchers not as “someone on TV” but as “the person I played with”—close role models who nurture the next generation. From Tohoku, we widen the base of people who will support society ten years from now. (Figure below is in Japanese.)



 

Toward a Future Where Science Belongs to All of Us

We chose crowdfunding not only for the funds. We want to make building “places that make science personal” a culture we advance together with everyone who supports us.
We picture ten years from now: the child who stared wide-eyed at the game’s reveal is first to raise a hand in science class; the high schooler frustrated by the escape game is pursuing an inquiry driven by their own question; the traveler who sat at the guesthouse table is talking about disaster preparedness in their own town—and beside each of them, PhD students are naturally present. A landscape where science belongs not to “someone else” but to all of us.
It takes no special talent to bring science to life—only a place to meet, and someone to sit beside you. We will keep creating those places. Beyond donating, sharing this page also helps greatly. We will report back here, showing in numbers and photos how your support came to life. Please join our challenge to energize science from Tohoku.

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Project owner photo

Science Event Club HagiiZ, President — Taichi Miyagishi

 

Messages of support

English translations of the supporters' messages will follow separately.