|
No
Small Success
The May 17 edition
of the British science journal Nature featured a new
breakthrough in semiconductor technology that was picked up by
the media and dubbed "micro-origami." The technology
has been developed by researchers at the Kyoto research
facility of the ATR Group, a telecommunications technology
firm. The research team is led by Pablo Vaccaro, an Argentine
scientist who has been living in Japan for the last 10 years.
|
|
|
Pablo
with his research team
|
|
Pablo was born in
Buenos Aires in 1964. His family's circumstances were modest,
so his father moved to Patagonia in search of work when he was
five years old. Pablo's memories of those days are that he had
difficulty adapting socially. Nevertheless, he was
academically gifted and passed through secondary school two
years ahead of his age group. As his classmates were all two
years older than he, this compounded his difficulties in
communicating with them.
Self-Confidence
When he was 18, someone explained to Pablo the principles of
Buddhist philosophy and told him, "If you chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo,
you will be able to solve any problem that you face." He
was attracted to the practice of Buddhism and soon joined the
SGI. Through committing himself to SGI activities he came to
the realization that he could be of value to other people, and
he started to gain self-confidence. His personality began to
change, and he became more outgoing. Seeing this, first his
mother and then his brother joined the SGI. He also took on
responsibility for supporting other members in his local SGI
organization.
After graduating from the Balseiro Institute, affiliated to
Cuyo National University, in 1986, he enrolled in a doctoral
program in physics. It was around this time that he began to
feel the desire to go to Japan to study. Many of the best
students in Spanish-speaking Argentina opt to study abroad in
Europe or the United States since the culture and language are
similar to those of Argentina, but Pablo wanted to learn
Japanese so that he could study the writings of Nichiren and
SGI President Ikeda in their original language. In 1991, he
was awarded a scholarship from the Japanese Ministry of
Education and entered the Engineering Department of Kyoto
University.
After the scholarship expired, he decided to remain in Japan.
His persistence paid off, and in 1993, he secured a position
at a research laboratory in Kyoto.
The radical new technique that Pablo and his team developed is
a way of creating micro-machined structures--such as
hinges--that position themselves by taking advantage of the
strain that naturally operates between a pair of semiconductor
layers with a slight mismatch in chemical composition. The
resulting strain causes the hinges to protrude and stand up by
themselves, whereas previously they had to be manufactured and
installed in a much more complex fashion. These micro-hinges
are a few microns in scale (one micron is one-thousandth of a
millimeter).
The current demonstration structure is relatively simple, but
the use of multiple units, one unit added or folded upon
another, enables the creation of structures of greater
complexity, a process that scientists have likened to the
ancient Japanese art of origami.
Based on
Buddhism
Pablo, meanwhile, has been surprised by the amount of media
attention the idea has attracted. His work has been featured
on nationwide TV and described in several major newspapers.
"All I can say," he comments, "is that it is
all related to basing my efforts on my practice of
Buddhism." Pablo is now part of a team that translates
Mr. Ikeda's guidance into Spanish. "There is such a
contrast with the anguish I used to feel in personal
relationships. My research has focused on interactions on the
molecular level, but my Buddhist practice has enabled me to
develop the greatest interactions of all--relations with
people."
|
