The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology's National Institute for Science and Technology Policy has awarded the Nice Step Researchers 2023 award to researchers who have made remarkable recent achievements, as are Assistant Professor Mito Kokawa of the Department of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba, and Associate Professor Kaoru Sugimura of the Graduate School of Science, the University of Tokyo. We selected 10 people including professors.
According to the National Institute for Science and Technology Policy, the focus is on young researchers who are expected to be active in the future, in addition to research related to various social issues in a wide range of fields such as AI, space, and biology. The selection was made after discussion by an internal screening committee from the perspective that the results are being widely returned to Japan and overseas in various ways.
Assistant Professor Konakawa graduated from the Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the University of Tokyo, and served as a special researcher at the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and a visiting researcher at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, before assuming his current position in 2015.He has received awards such as the 6th Japan Society of Food Science and Technology Best Paper Award.He was praised for his work using light in the ultraviolet to near-infrared region to measure the absorption, fluorescence, and scattering of target foods to investigate the fine structure and texture of target foods in their original state.
After graduating from Kyoto University's Graduate School of Science, Associate Professor Sugimura held positions such as a researcher at the RIKEN Brain Science Research Center and an associate professor at the Center for Materials-Cell Integration Systems, Kyoto University's Institute for Advanced Study, before assuming his current position in 2021.He has received the Kyoto University Tachibana Award and the Kao Science Award, among others.
He developed a method to estimate cell mechanics from image data, contributing to the elucidation that cells in multicellular organisms behave cooperatively and form ordered structures to obtain properly functioning bodies.
In addition, Professor Seiji Kumagai of Kyoto University's Institute for the Future of Humanity and Society, Associate Professor Yuya Fukano of the Graduate School of Horticulture, Chiba University, Assistant Professor Nobuyuki Yoshioka of the Graduate School of Engineering, the University of Tokyo, and Senior Lecturer of the Faculty of Environment, University of Queensland. Tatsuya Amano, University of North Carolina Greensboro Assistant Professor Kei Terui, Stability AI Japan Senior Research Scientist Takuya Akiba, Pale Blue Representative Jun Asakawa, and OMRON SINIC X Principal Investigator Yoshitaka Ushiku were selected. ing.
