Successful Wrap-Up of the Annual RIKEN BDR SymposiumSpotlighting cutting-edge research by up-and-coming researchers

The RIKEN BDR Symposium 2026, entitled, “Biological Horizons: Innovative Explorations into Life’s Mechanisms and Dynamics,” was held at the RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research (BDR) in Kobe on March 2 and 3, 2026, and was organized by BDR’s Masaya Hagiwara, Masayuki Oginuma and Chisako Sakuma. Contrary to previous years in which the BDR Symposium was held over three days, this year it was shortened to two days, but still attracted a total of 178 participants from around Japan and abroad, including the United States, United Kingdom, India, Taiwan, Canada, Germany, Hungary, Portugal, South Korea and Malaysia.

The BDR Symposium 2026 opened with remarks from Dr. Ryoichiro Kageyama, director of RIKEN BDR, who warmly welcomed all attendees to the Center for two days of scientific talks and discussions on a wide range of cutting-edge research. He was also the Keynote Speaker for the symposium, presenting his talk titled, “Controlling neural stem cells in the aged/diseased brain,” in the last session of the first day. This year’s symposium organizers wanted to shine a spotlight on up-and-coming researchers, particularly those in early to mid-career stages, who were carrying out research on challenging or unique ideas, or developing new fundamental technologies for understanding biological phenomena. The program featured talks by 28 speakers who fit this vision; 22 speakers who were invited by the organizers and 6 speakers who were chosen from amongst the submitted abstracts. Topics of scientific talks were broad-ranging, spanning comparative and evolutionary biology, developmental biology, homeostasis, aging, behavioral biology, and new models, platforms, or technologies to study biological complexities of life. Each of the insightful talks by the speakers was followed by active Q&A sessions with the audience.

Active interactions and discussions also took place during the two poster sessions, one held on each day of the symposium. There were 74 posters registered for the poster session, and all posters were eligible to be selected for poster awards. Poster presentations were judged by the BDR PIs who attended the BDR Symposium and the awards were announced just before the closing of the symposium on the second day. The best poster awards were awarded to three young researchers with certificates being presented by Dr. Kageyama.

This year, there was also a limited number of travel grants made available to young researchers (graduate students, postdocs, and other non-PI scientists) who applied for support to attend the RIKEN BDR Symposium. Following a screening process by the organizers, four applicants from four different countries, including Japan, Malaysia, the United Kingdom and the United States, were selected to receive the travel grants.

“There were initially some worries about whether people would be interested in attending a meeting covering such a broad spectrum of topics,” commented Hagiwara, one of the symposium organizers. “But we were delighted to see that the attendees appeared to be enjoying themselves learning about research outside of their field and to see a lot of lively discussions unfolding amongst the participants during the coffee and lunch breaks, banquet and the poster sessions. Interaction across broader fields is key to driving innovation and we hope the symposium provided such opportunities.”

Next year’s RIKEN BDR Symposium is scheduled to be held March 7 to 10, 2027, on the theme of AI for Science and AI for Biology and will be co-organized with RIKEN’s TRIP-AGIS (Advanced General Intelligence for Science) program. Details about next year’s symposium will be made available in the fall of this year.