Hiroko Masuda plays with her son. (Yu Fujinami) OKAYAMA--Hiroko Masuda took a brief pause from her research to give birth to her daughter. Three months after the delivery, the new mother passed her doctoral thesis review. Masuda, now 37, who currently lives in Okayama, once prided herself as “a woman with no blank time periods on her curriculum vitae.” She had devoted herself to solar studies at Kyoto University and later studied at the university’s doctoral course. In her first year under the Ph.D. program, Masuda won Kyoto University’s Tachibana Award for Most Outstanding Female Researcher. In her third year, she received another in-house award for exceptional female scientists.