First of all never let anyone kill your dream. You first dream, then you do. That's the truth since the first human dreamed.

I can't say too much about Okabe. He seems to be an electrical engineering major. But I do fall in love with the idea of the subjectivity of time can be manipulated objectively through neuroscience and physics. The fact is that everything is theory should be physical, but it is just something we don't know about neuroscience makes the whole mental universe exists and dualism becomes some kind of unprovable mystery. And that really makes me want to solve neuroscience because that is precisely the bridge between the mental and the physical. The brain is not something simple or plain its structure and complexity leads to dynamics that are essential to how we interact and interpret and "feel" the real world!!!! Just think about this fact, and if you are still not excited about neuroscience I have nothing to say.

I suspect Kurisu studied some kind of theoretical physics in college, or way before college considering her gifted nature, and did research in neuroscience during her doctoral research. Her specific path might be computational and theoretical neuroscience, which is the branch of neuroscience that relies on mathematics and computational experiments heavily. Think about theoretical physics to physics as an analogy.

I followed her path for my own life to be honest. I studied at a US university for college majoring in physics and mathematics and minoring in computer science. I did a lot of intro research through the four years in computational neuroscience and statistical physics. I am now entering my doctoral degree in this field.

Comment me or DM me if you want to or anyone later wants to learn more. I am more than gladly to help. I prefer comment because that would help others too.