BDR Takes Part in RIKEN Open Days in Kobe and YokohamaBuilding connections with the local community

The RIKEN Open Days, held annually at each RIKEN campus on different days, were held on Saturday, November 2, 2024 in Kobe and Saturday, November 16, 2024 in Yokohama. Many BDR laboratories based in Kobe and Yokohama contributed to the Open Days held at the respective campuses.

The weather failed to cooperate with the RIKEN Open Day in Kobe this year, with most of the day plagued by pouring rain. Despite the rain and strong winds, a total of 3,404 people came out to the Open Day to take in the activities organized by BDR, Center for Computational Science (R-CCS), Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences Program (iTHEMS), and TRIP-Advanced General Intelligence for Science Program (TRIP-AGIS). Events organized by the BDR laboratories were held in the Kobe Campus East and West areas. 

One of the perks of visiting the East and West areas of the RIKEN Kobe Campus is the opportunity to walk inside some of the laboratories at RIKEN BDR through open labs or lab tours and see the actual setting where researchers do their work, which is usually not open to the public. The open labs and tours also allow visitors to hear firsthand from the researchers themselves about what they are working on. This year, seven BDR laboratories opened their doors to allow visitors to walk through at their own pace or participate in guided tours by BDR research staff. The Open Day also included several exhibits or experience-based tours organized by laboratories where visitors could learn about different model organisms that are used at the research at BDR to uncover various biological processes, such as Drosophila (fruit fly), mosquitoes, C. elegans (nematodes) and killifish, and mice, opossums, geckos, and other unique organisms housed at the BDR. At the exhibits, research staff were on hand to explain to the visitors the different features of the model organisms and how they were used in research and, where possible, showed samples of the animals using magnifying glasses or microscopes. There were also a few exhibits that introduced unique research equipment used in BDR research, such as the robotic arm Cobotta used in research related to laboratory automation and mass spectrometers used to quantify and identify biomolecules. 

The BDR also co-organized a special lecture series with R-CCS and iTHEMS targeting junior and high school students, which was also streamed online. Four researchers working at the Kobe Campus gave talks on their research followed by Q&A after each talk; Genshiro A. Sunagawa (Laboratory for Hibernation Biology, RIKEN BDR) talked about his research on hibernation, Kento Sato (High Performance Big Data Research Team, R-CCS) introduced his work building large-language models (LLM) or AI systems using the Fugaku supercomputer, specifically building AI system for science, Kyosuke Adachi (iTHEMS; Nonequilibrium Physics of Living Matter RIKEN Hakubi Research Team, BDR) introduced his research to uncover the mechanisms of collective motion using physics and computers, and Safiye Esra Sarper (Laboratory for Developmental Morphogeometry) talked about her work in trying to understand how animal body shapes are formed and how they have changed over time from an evolutionary standpoint. Other programs included an event where visitors could try their English skills by talking to BDR staff, such as scientists, technical staff and graduate students, in English to learn about where they were from and their research, and event to make a button badge using images of BDR research. There was also a coloring corner with a focus on the latest Ikimon Coloring page featuring the hair follicle, and an exhibit by the Laboratory for Tissue Microenvironment led by Team Leader Hironobu Fujiwara who supervised the design of the hair follicle coloring page, explaining their work related to the hair and hair follicle.

New this year was the involvement of high school students from Hyogo Prefectural Nagata High School, a local school in Kobe, to help with some of the programs organized by the labs. They served as communicators to explain some general concepts or certain aspects of the research conducted by the labs that hosted them. Despite some initial nervousness in the beginning, all students gradually showed more confidence in their role as well as interacting with the host lab members and visitors.

The RIKEN Yokohama Campus Open Day, held jointly with the neighboring Yokohama City University, took place two weeks after the RIKEN Open Day in Kobe. In contrast to the rainy weather in Kobe, the Open Day in Yokohama was blessed with sunshine and warm weather, which helped draw 2,344 visitors to the campus.

The BDR laboratories at the Yokohama Campus joined hands to organize several events, from tours of large-scale facilities and to hands-on programs. One major landmark of the Yokohama Campus is the unique conical and donut-shaped wooden buildings, home to the cryo-electron microscopy (cryoEM) facility and the NMR complex. Participants of the tours inside these buildings were guided by research staff who operate and use the instruments regularly and got a close-up look at these large, sophisticated analytical instruments and also hear how they are used in BDR research. Many tour participants could be seen looking up at the uniquely shaped high ceilings of the facility as well. 

There were three new hands-on programs run jointly by BDR labs in Yokohama. The first was a workshop where kids could conduct an experiment to separate two different colors of fluorescent proteins from a solution containing a mix of the two fluorescent proteins using column chromatography. The room filled with excitement each time the lights were turned off so that the participants could shine green or blue colored light at the tube containing their proteins to see what colors they fluoresce. For the other two hands-on programs, one was making colorful water drops by dripping droplets of colored water into an oil and seeing the droplets sink to the bottom of the container without mixing with the oil, and the other was observing the proteins that make muscles contract under a microscope. These two programs were held inside the lab, giving participants the chance to see the inside of a laboratory as well. Other events that catered to the family crowd was the event for making button badges using images from BDR research and a coloring corner featuring the newest “Hair” coloring page. 

Many of the events organized by the BDR were supported by junior high and high school students from the Yokohama Science Frontier High School and the attached Junior High School which has a partnership with the RIKEN Yokohama Campus. Students helped run events by communicating and guiding visitors under the supervision of RIKEN staff. 

The Open Days for 2025 are scheduled to be held in the fall and the dates will be announced on the RIKEN websites when fixed.