Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences
Tohoku University

FRIS Interviews #02

FRIS Interviews#02後編

  • 鈴木 真介Shinsuke Suzuki

    神経経済学Neuroeconomics

  • 大学 保一Yasukazu Daigaku

    分子遺伝学・ゲノム情報科学DNA replication, Mutagenesis

  • 吉野 大輔Daisuke Yoshino

    メカノバイオロジー・設計工学Mechanobiology,
    Design Engineering

The Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences aims to "create new values by cultivating and developing interdisciplinary research and contribute to human society". The plan that researchers belonging to the institute talk and think about the concept above is this series "Beyond the Border".

While talking about each of their research lives, they will talk about "interdisciplinary activities that each of them experienced". While highlighting the ideals and actualities of the Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences (hereinafter referred to as "FRIS"), at the same time, it is the place for the members of FRIS to consider the future of the organization through dialogue.

Groups of individuals having originality

Yoshino
There are many strange people in a word.

Everyone: (haha)

Yoshino
There are not many laboratories where the fields are divided and the people whose expertise is diverse are gathered. People look like strange people if they are completely different. Though people think other people strange each other. I feel that there are things that can be utilized in my research among them. I think that it is the best point.
吉野 大輔Yoshino Daisuke

Assistant Professor, Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences
He completed the Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University. Ph.D. in engineering. Following research as a postdoctoral fellow at the Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering, Tohoku University, an assistant professor at the Institute of Fluid Science, Tohoku University and a visiting researcher at the Mechanobiology Institute, National University of Singapore, etc., he has been in current position since 2017. His specialty is mechanobiology and design engineering. Especially recently, he is working on validation of physiotherapy applying biological response to mechanical stimulus and development of cardiovascular medical device.

Daigaku
Well,everybody thinks of the same thing, as we are researchers in different fields. There are sides that we appeal to being unique. As a matter of course, having my own original ideas and methodologies is essential to live as a good scientist and we ask ourselves what are our originality. If we are stuck with same things, we have less chance to encounter new findings.
Yoshino
People whose research directions are fixed are good at living in this world.
Daigaku
In collaborative research, it is very comfortable to work with the researcher who have his/her own vision. In this case, we can be quite confident about what the collaborator is doing. As a result, we are likely to build good relationship and there is more chances to see new findings. After all, if we stuck with same approach as before, the same idea, surprising results hardly comes out.
鈴木 真介Suzuki Shinsuke

Assistant Professor, Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences
He completed the Graduate School of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Tsukuba. Ph.D. in socioeconomics. After working as a researcher at RIKEN, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology, etc. And then he has been in current position since 2016. His specialty is neuroscience. He is conducting research on human decision making mechanism by combining information engineering approaches such as machine learning and artificial intelligence with functional brain imaging.

Suzuki
In my current laboratory, I seem to be thought "he is a guy saying weird things". As Mr. Daigaku said, in the experimental labs it is important to conduct experiments to make clear differences. On the other hand, when I am constructing a mathematical model, I think that students think, "why do we have to do such a complicated thing since other teachers do not do that?"
Daigaku
Still, the longer you stay, the more your thought will sink in, but sometimes it is difficult to accept the research style/concept of different fields from the beginning. In FRIS, we have many opportunities to hear about research in different field, but it takes a certain amount of time to catch a glimpse of essence in individual research. For example, from researchers in physics and space, I get comments such as "life science tend to do characterisation of details" or "does not approach to principle and end up observation". I get a bit annoyed sometimes (haha), but when I come back to these comments by myself, I wonder if current life science tends to build up too complicated knowledge and we might miss simple fundamentals. Basically, I think this difference in concepts came from research objects - life scientists mainly have a precise research style pursuing cellular mechanisms; in the other hand, space people (here means people who research space) who has a sense of saying "it is okay even if it is about one or two orders of magnitude". In that sense, approaches in other fields has something fresh. So I recently tend think that we somehow have to step back and see our research in the bigger picture.
Yoshino
They are too direct (haha). They ask me about things that we do not usually ask by tacit understanding if we have the same specialty. On the contrary, they ask me as much as I’m hard put to reply. That's why I also ask them as much as possible. Since people in different fields of expertise are gathered in the first place, it does not become conversational at all and it is meaningless if you are refraining.
大学 保一Daigaku Yasukazu

Assistant Professor, Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences
He graduated from the School of Science, Tohoku University and completed the Graduate School of Life Sciences, Tohoku University. Following research as a researcher at the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute and at the Genome Damage and Stability Centre, University of Sussex in UK, he joined Overseas Research Fellowships of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Then he has been in current position since 2015. His specialty is molecular genetics · genome informatics. In order to investigate the mechanism how mutation occurs, he is studying phenomena occurring around DNA such as DNA replication and DNA repair.

The future of "interdisciplinary"

Suzuki
As far as I know, Mr. Yoshino has been conducting many joint researches at FRIS. I think that you get the benefits.
Yoshino
Since I have an environment where I can immediately ask when I think "this can be used", conversely, I'm often thinking "can mine be used by someone?" I carefully check the press release and the announcements of papers published on the website of FRIS and put up an antenna to see if they can be used. There are also things that I cannot understand at all, but once I check them all and I approach when I think "it’s interesting and it seems to be usable".
Daigaku
A laboratory in Japanese tends to be a unit and stand-alone. The organization is vertically divided and we do not know much about the neighborhood laboratories. .
Yoshino
If I go to the next laboratory and eat snacks, I will get scolded "why are you here?" (Haha). There are many open labs in overseas universities, so everyone is in the same place and there isn’t something like that. Even if there is something I'd like to ask in FRIS now, the campus is disjointed. I think that it is good to consult with casually if everyone is in the same place. I think that there will be a big difference in future research which universities in Japan do things like buying common equipment together as an open laboratory.
Daigaku
It is very ineffective that laboratories nearby own the same equipment.
Yoshino
I think it is necessary that individual laboratories do not have expensive equipment but we create a structure such as creating a division that manages the equipment using that budget. I think that it will be tough for researchers and administrative officials to bear the burden.
Daigaku
I think that once we have made it, research ability will rise. Each person has different characteristics and I think that it is the best when I think about efforts, etc.

[2017年12月1日]

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