Meet the guest speaker of 2017: AKIKO NAKAMURA
Recent astronomical research, space research, laboratory research and numerical simulations have brought a wealth of new and exciting findings on extra-solar planetary systems and on asteroids, comets, meteoroids in our solar system.
This year BSD guest speaker - Akiko Nakamura, born and raised in in a small town of Shikoku – one of the most beautiful Japanese islands is an Associate professor at the Department of Planetology from Graduate School of Science - Kobe University. After obtaining her Doctor of Science degree from Kyoto University, she became a Research Associate at the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) before she moved to the Graduate School of Science - Kobe University.
As a laboratory experimentalist on collisional evolution of small bodies in the solar system, she performed laboratory impact experiments in order to study velocity distribution of fragments from collisional disruption and ejecta from particulate layer. These experiments provide insights into collisional evolution of small solar system bodies and regolith formation processes on their surface.
The asteroid from the asteroid belt discovered on September 17, 1998 - actually Asteroid 23895 Akikonakamura, at the Lowell Observatory Near-Earth-Object Search (LONEOS) - Anderson Mesa Station, Arizona, USA was named after her.
She joined space missions of ISAS and she was a member of the science team and of the orbiter camera team of the Hayabusa mission - the unmanned spacecraft developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to return a sample of material from a small near-Earth asteroid named 25143 Itokawa to Earth for further analysis. She was responsible of estimating the surface properties of the target asteroid, for example, the roughness and the light-reflectance based on limited information taken from the ground.
In 2005, Hayabusa spacecraft arrived at a 300-meter wide asteroid Itokawa and revealed its face. It was far beyond what was expected, which was a great surprise but really a pleasure for her.
She is also the Vice President of Space and Planetary Science Section of Japan Geoscience Union (JpGU) and a member of the Japanese Society for Planetary Science, Astronomical Society of Japan and International Astronomical Union (IAU).
This year BSD guest speaker - Akiko Nakamura, born and raised in in a small town of Shikoku – one of the most beautiful Japanese islands is an Associate professor at the Department of Planetology from Graduate School of Science - Kobe University. After obtaining her Doctor of Science degree from Kyoto University, she became a Research Associate at the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) before she moved to the Graduate School of Science - Kobe University.
As a laboratory experimentalist on collisional evolution of small bodies in the solar system, she performed laboratory impact experiments in order to study velocity distribution of fragments from collisional disruption and ejecta from particulate layer. These experiments provide insights into collisional evolution of small solar system bodies and regolith formation processes on their surface.
The asteroid from the asteroid belt discovered on September 17, 1998 - actually Asteroid 23895 Akikonakamura, at the Lowell Observatory Near-Earth-Object Search (LONEOS) - Anderson Mesa Station, Arizona, USA was named after her.
She joined space missions of ISAS and she was a member of the science team and of the orbiter camera team of the Hayabusa mission - the unmanned spacecraft developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to return a sample of material from a small near-Earth asteroid named 25143 Itokawa to Earth for further analysis. She was responsible of estimating the surface properties of the target asteroid, for example, the roughness and the light-reflectance based on limited information taken from the ground.
In 2005, Hayabusa spacecraft arrived at a 300-meter wide asteroid Itokawa and revealed its face. It was far beyond what was expected, which was a great surprise but really a pleasure for her.
She is also the Vice President of Space and Planetary Science Section of Japan Geoscience Union (JpGU) and a member of the Japanese Society for Planetary Science, Astronomical Society of Japan and International Astronomical Union (IAU).
Meet the Judges of Big SCIENCE DAY 2017:
Amy Mathies
In my youth, both my mother and myself suffered from allergy and I became interested in studying about “allergy” in the fields of biomedical science. I obtained a B.S. in Biochemistry and Biophysics at Iowa State University and an M.S. in Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Indiana. After completing my graduate studies, I joined a Swiss Pharmaceutical Company as a research scientist and worked on developing anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer drugs for six years. I took a break from work to raise two children for a while, and then went back to research the efficacy of the herbal medicines at Showa Women’s University in Tokyo and received a Ph.D. in Nutritional Sciences. In 2011, I joined my professor in starting a company called “Research Institute for Nutrition and Aging” that continued our research and developed medicines and supplements for Metabolic Syndrome and Diabetes. Since 2015, I have been working at the Center for Research and Development Strategy of the Japan Science and Technology Agency, researching Foreign Science and Technology Policies and Strategies and reporting them to the government agencies. |
Nikolaus Boltze
Born in 1963, I was trained and employed as an officer in the German Army (Army Aviation) between the years 1983 and 1987 before I began my studying of aeronautical design and engineering in Munich andHamburg, graduating as Diplom-Ingenieur in 1991. After that I then joined Daifuku Co., Ltd. a leading Japanese manufacturer of material handling equipment as a Sales-Engineer in the Munich Representative Office. In 1997 I joined the Behr GmbH & Co. KG, a leading automotive supplier in the area of engine-cooling and AC-Equipment as a Project-Manager for Japan. In 1998 I established Behr Japan K.K. as the first footprint of the Behr group in Japan. In addition to being the Representative Directorof Behr Japan I became appointed to President of Behr-Toyo Engine Cooling Systems K.K. a joint venture between Behr GmbH and Toyo Radiator Co. Ltd. (T.RAD Co., Ltd.). Soon after, in 2005, I became Managing Director of ThyssenKrupp Automotive Japan, which was reorganised into ThyssenKrupp Japan in 2013.Since 2010 I am also a Group Representative of the ThyssenKrupp AG in Japan. I am also both a member of the Automotive Components Committee of the EBC (European Business Council) and honorary representative of Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, and a President of the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCIJ) in Japan since 2014 and, of course, a husband and father of four children. |
Thomas McHugh
Originally from Chicago, IL, I received my B.A. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1994. I then entered the graduate program of the Department of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, completing my Ph.D. with Dr. Susumu Tonegawa and Dr. Matt Wilson in the field of hippocampal learning and memory. I was first to establish hippocampal place cell recording in freely behaving mice (McHugh et al, 1996) and remain a world leader in the field. Over my career I authored multiple seminal papers, now with over 2000 citations in total, and have helped delineate the brain circuits responsible for processes such as rapid memory encoding (McHugh & Tonegawa 2009), memory discrimination (McHugh et al 2007) and memory consolidation (Nakashiba et al 2009). I moved to Japan in April 2009 and established the Lab for Circuit and Behavioral Physiology at RIKEN BSI. My lab is interested in how circuits in brain interact to store, organize, recall and use experiences and focuses on dissecting and decoding the physiology of memory |
Niwa Hideo
Having earned both my Masters and Bachelors Degree at the Nihon University of Medicine in Tokyo, I then worked at the department of Otolaryngology as the resident and then instructor at the Nihon University Surugadai Hospital. Then, after moving to the University of Pittsburgh as a visiting research fellow for two years, I returned back to working for the Nihon University but this time at at the Nihon University Itabashi Hospital as an Instructor. Finally, I worked as an assistant professor at the Nihon University School of Dentistry at Matsudo for three years before becoming an associate professor myself in 2011 and am still there.. |
Shinji Nozaki
In 1976, 1980 and 1984, I received my B.S. degree from Tokyo Institute of Technology, the M.S. degree from Wichita State University, KS, and the Ph.D. degree from Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, all in electrical engineering respectively. After that from 1984 to 1993, I was a senior device physicist at Intel Corporation in Santa Clara, CA. My expertise was in heteroepitaxial growth and the characterization of compound semiconductors and development of Si VLSI technologies and devices. Then I joined the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo (UEC-Tokyo) as an Associate Professor of Communications and Systems Engineering in 1994 and am finally now, a current professor of Electronic Engineering at UEC-Tokyo. Back in 1999, I was also a Visiting Scholar at University of California, Berkeley, CA. I have authored and co-authored over 200 research papers and have served as a member of several advisory committees on advanced semiconductor technologies in Japan. |
Masaki Sekine
I began my research activities in 2007 at The University of Tokyo from molecular design and synthesis of organic fluorescent materials for ion-sensors. After getting M.S. degree, I started with JSPS Fellowship, in the same university but at a different laboratory, research of organometallic catalysis specially to develop C-H functionalization and received Ph.D. in 2013. I then joined BASF as a research scientist to develop electrolytes for lithium-ion batteries. I now worked as a corporate analyst to create strategy and projects. It might look my interest swung all the time, but all my activities are actually connected in one concept: “molecular design and development of its synthesis for energy solution”. Currently in BASF, I enjoyed together with colleagues in global to think about how to approach to the energy/environmental issues |
Robert Kneller
After medical school and an internship in pediatrics, I studied public health and then did medical work in China for a year and a half. After returning to America in 1988, I joined the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as a cancer epidemiologist and returned to China to carry out collaborative research into risk factors for stomach and other cancers. After several years, I moved to another part of NIH where I was responsible for negotiating agreements with companies to jointly conduct human trials of new cancer medicines from NIH. This drew upon my legal training before medical school. In 1997, I came to the University of Tokyo on an Abe Fellowship to study the Japanese system of industry-university cooperation. Since 1998, I have been a professor in the University of Tokyo's Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology (RCAST) in Komaba. In addition to university-industry cooperation, my teaching and research dealt with intellectual property and how universities can license patent rights to companies in ways that increase incentives for the companies to develop university inventions. Recently, most of my efforts have been directed towards build new companies that will develop promising biomedical discoveries from Japanese universities, and also teaching to encourage scientific entrepreneurship. |
Pavan Kumar
I was born in Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh, India, on 1987. I completed the B.Sc. degree from Govt. Degree College, Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh, India, in 2004, and the M.Sc. degree in physics from Sri Venkateswara University, Andhra Pradesh, India, in 2007. I received the doctoral degree in Physics from School of Physics, University of Hyderabad, Telangana, India, in December 2015. Bulk superconductors are promising for various scientific and technological applications such as magnetic levitation, magnetic resonance imaging and nuclear magnetic resonance imaging in the medical field and fusion reactors based on magnetic confinement, particle accelerators, fault current limiters, electric motors and generators, high sensitivity particle detectors, magnetic bearings, permanent magnets, and flywheels etc,. Therefore, for my doctoral work, I worked on the effect of introducing mixed light rare earths (LRE) on bulk high temperature YBa2Cu3O7-δ (YBCO) superconductor to enhance the super-current densities at high fields. After finishing doctoral course, joined as Postdoctoral researcher in Shibaura Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan, under the mentorship of Prof. Dr. M. Murakami and Prof. Dr. M. Muralidhar (October 2016 to current date). My current research interests mainly focus on the crystal growth, microstructural modifications for enhancement of the critical current densities and trapped fields of various LREBCO superconductors. |
Otis Richardson
Innovation Prize Judge Admissions Counselor, SNS Content Creator at Temple University, Japan Campus, Minato, Tokyo. Born in Philadelphia, USA, I grew up in the public school system where science fairs were the highlight of the year. I moved to Japan with my family and grew to love the country, people, culture, food, and more. After gaining my undergraduate degree in International Relations and my MBA in marketing I work at Temple University as a recruitment specialist, using social media to increase awareness and reach. Psychology plays a large part in my job as understanding what attracts prospective students to different social media posts is key to increasing enrollment. Simple things like text/grammar/emojis used, timing, color of the advertisement, camera angle, etc. are all very important. My team and I are constantly looking for the latest trends that can be used to increase traffic to TUJ's website and social media outlets. |
GUEST SPEAKER OF 2016: NAOKO YAMAZAKI
Born in 1970 in Matsudo City, Chiba, Naoko Yamazki graduated from the University of Tokyo with a bachelor's degree in Aerospace Engineering in 1993 and a master's degree in Aerospace Engineering in 1996. Soon after in 1996, Yamazaki joined the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA, currently Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and was involved in the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) system integration (developmental duty). She also worked on failure analysis and development of JEM assembly/initial operation procedures in the JEM Project Team. Between June 1998 to March 2000, Yamazaki was involved in development of the ISS Centrifuge (life science experiment facility) and conducted conceptual framework and preliminary design in the Centrifuge Project Team.
It was then, in February 1999, that Yamazaki was selected by NASDA as one of three Japanese astronaut candidates for the International Space Station (ISS) together with Dr. Satoshi Furukawa and Akihiko Hoshide. Yamazaki started NASDA's Basic Training program in April and was finally certified as an astronaut in September 2001. From 2001, she participated in ISS Advanced Training, while working on development of the hardware and operation of the Kibo modules and the Centrifuge. In May 2004, Yamazaki was certified as a Soyuz-TMA Flight Engineer. She was dispatched to NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in June 2004. She went through training (Astronaut Candidate Training) at JSC for about a year and eight months, and was qualified for flight assignments aboard the space shuttle as a Mission Specialist (MS) in Feb, 2006. In November 2008, she was assigned as a crew member for the STS-131 (19A) mission.
In March 2010, she flew to the ISS aboard the space shuttle Discovery (STS-131). During the mission, she supported the mission's primary tasks by operating the Shuttle Remote Manipulator System (SRMS) and the Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS). She also orchestrated cargo transfer activities between the space shuttle and the ISS as a loadmaster of the mission.From December 2010, Yamazaki resumed her study in the field of aerospace engineering at the University of Tokyo.
In August 2011, she retired from JAXA.
|
|
|
Guest Speaker OF 2015: Reiko KURODA
Reiko Kuroda is a Professor at Tokyo University of Science/ Professor Emeritus at The University of Tokyo. After obtaining her Ph.D. in chemistry from The University of Tokyo, she worked first as a postdoctoral Research associate in the Department of Chemistry and then Research Fellow/Honorary Lecturer in the Department of Biophysics at King’s College London. She then obtained a permanent senior staff scientist position at Institute of Cancer Research, UK. She now investigates chirality (left and right handedness) from molecules to crystals in the non-biological domain, and from genes to individual living organisms in the biological domains, with a view to linking microscopic and macroscopic worlds through chirality. Specifically, she studies chiral discrimination, generation and enhancement in the solid state as well as mechanism of snail coiling which is determined by a single gene locus. She has designed/constructed novel chiroptical spectrophotometers, and with them studied a variety of samples in the condensed phase including organic/inorganic compounds as well as biological samples such as beta-amyloids.
She was awarded many prizes including The Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (2009), L’Oreal UNESCO Women in Science (2013), Prime Minister's Commendation for Efforts toward the Formation of a Gender-Equal Society (2014) and Academia Prize, The Academic Society of Japan (2015). She is a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
In parallel to her scientific research, she has been involved in science policy, science communication and capacity building. She was the vice president of International Council for Science (ICSU, 2008-2011), a member of the Council of Science and Technology Policy (CSTP), Cabinet office of Japanese Government (2001-2007), and is now a member of Scientific Advisory Board to the United Nations Secretary General on global sustainability (2013- ). She was elected as a Fellow of TWAS (The World Academy of Science) in 2014. She has founded a campus-wide minor-degree graduate course on science interpretation at The University of Tokyo.
She was awarded many prizes including The Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (2009), L’Oreal UNESCO Women in Science (2013), Prime Minister's Commendation for Efforts toward the Formation of a Gender-Equal Society (2014) and Academia Prize, The Academic Society of Japan (2015). She is a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
In parallel to her scientific research, she has been involved in science policy, science communication and capacity building. She was the vice president of International Council for Science (ICSU, 2008-2011), a member of the Council of Science and Technology Policy (CSTP), Cabinet office of Japanese Government (2001-2007), and is now a member of Scientific Advisory Board to the United Nations Secretary General on global sustainability (2013- ). She was elected as a Fellow of TWAS (The World Academy of Science) in 2014. She has founded a campus-wide minor-degree graduate course on science interpretation at The University of Tokyo.
|
|
|
Other Guest Speakers of the Past:
|
Guest Speaker 2014:
Lena Akai, Ph.D. Former student of Seisen International School and a graduate of Harvard and Showa University of Medicine. Currently she works at the Department of Psychosocial Medicine for the National Centre for Child Health and Development in Japan. |