BDR Intensive Lecture Program for Graduate Students held in Kobe
Oct. 17, 2023
This year’s BDR Intensive Lecture Program for Graduate Students was held on August 2 to 3, in an in-person and virtual hybrid format at the Kobe Campus. The two-day program is organized annually for interested graduate students enrolled at BDR’s affiliated graduate schools, primarily in the Kansai region, and serves to introduce and share the broad range of cutting-edge research being carried out at BDR. Most graduate students who participate in the program are also eligible to receive credit from their respective universities toward their graduate degree programs. A total of 108 participants were in attendance over the two days.
The Program consists of two main parts: lectures by BDR scientists and the opportunity to visit a BDR laboratory located at the Kobe Campus.
The lectures this year were given by BDR team leaders Ichiro Hiratani (Laboratory for Developmental Epigenetics), Mikako Shirouzu (Laboratory for Protein Functional and Structural Biology), Yoshihiro Shimizu (Laboratory for Cell-Free Protein Synthesis), Tomoya Kitajima (Laboratory for Chromosome Segregation) as well as special postdoctoral researcher Hina Kosakamoto (Laboratory for Nutritional Biology) on the first day, and by team leaders Kyogo Kawaguchi (Nonequilibrium physics of living matter RIKEN Hakubi Research Team), Shuichi Onami (Laboratory for Developmental Dynamics), Itoshi Nikaido (Laboratory for Bioinformatics Research), Genshiro Sunagawa (Laboratory for Hibernation Biology), and Takefumi Kondo (Laboratory for Developmental Genome System) on the second day. Each of the speakers introduced their latest research, as well as offered some insights into pursuing a career as a scientist, and responded to questions from the students.
The participating graduate students also had the chance to meet and interact further with the lecture speakers as well as other BDR team leaders during a casual mixer held at the end of the first day.
On day 2 of the Intensive Lecture Program, the participants were given an opportunity to visit and tour of a laboratory at the BDR Kobe Campus. The PIs or research scientists of the BDR laboratories taking part in this session guided a small group of students to their respective laboratories where they introduced their research as well as state-of-the-art research instruments and equipment they work with.
This year was the first time in four years that the Intensive Lecture
Program was held in a primarily in-person program since the Covid19
outbreak.