Program
In the 2014 Young Researchers Retreat (YRR), we aim to make you find new view or deeper thought to see things by communicating and understanding with people from different background, with people who has different sense of values and with people from different countries. We prepare a program that you can deeply communicate with various participant.
In this retreat, we invite more than 10 graduate student from foreign country’s universities, so we use English all 3 days, therefore FBS students from foreign county don’t need to be afraid about language and it’s very good opportunity for you to make friend of Japanese and foreign university graduate student.
Special Lecture
We are going to invite two researchers who are at the forefront of biological science, and they will give a lectures regarding their research and their views of life. Please enjoy these lectures which hopefully should be a bit different from ordinary seminars.
Dr. Toshio Tsukiyama
Mr.Tsukiyama is a PI at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in America. He researches about how chromatin is regulated by using techniques of molecular genetics and the biochemistry. In his talk he will explain his current work to what it means to live a researcher's life.
In addition, we will hold an informal second session. In this session, you can talk about various topics like the life of PI, Postdoc, graduated school students in United States. You can gain the latest information of the situation around researchers in the US. Please feel free to join this session.
HP: TSUKIYAMA LAB http://research.fhcrc.org/tsukiyama/en.html
Dr. Takeshi Naganuma
Dr. Naganuma is an associate professor at Hiroshima University, specializing in Biological oceanology, Microbial morphology, and the search extremophile life. He is called the “Indiana Jones of the scientific community” because of his inquisitive nature and his fun research activities around the world. He is also active in outreach programs through media and print. The topic in the lecture is how to enjoy research activity, the values of science and so on.
HP: Naganuma Web Site http://takeshi-naganuma.jp/
Poster Tour & Poster Session
Use a poster to communicate your research with the attending students and scientists from different fields and participate in cultural and intellectual exchange. Poster tour: Groups will be formed with researchers and students from different backgrounds and the group will hear a presentation on their poster from each member.
The presenter should make their talk easy to understand for scientists in different fields, and focus on the fundamental significance of their work. During the poster session people can freely view posters that they are interested in and engage in discuss with other researchers.
* Please prepare your own poster for the poster presentation
- Horizontal 841mm × Vertical1189mm (A0 size) or below.
- If below A0 size then printing out slides and aligning them is also OK.
- As a general rule please prepare the poster in English.
- Please prepare a poster than can be easily understood by researchers outside your own field.
Group Discussion
In the group discussion session, we propose 5 Question which don’t have typical answers. You are divided into about 10 groups, then each group discusses one of these 5 Questions. For making group, we ask you that which is your favorite question in advance. In the middle of this discussion session, groups which have the same question present their progress to each other and discuss their thoughts and opinions in order to find other views and think deeper. On the last day of the retreat each group will have a presentation about your group’s answer to the question. Let’s challenge how deeply you can think about significant questions.
- How deeply can you think about these questions? -
Here we show you 5 questions below. These questions are highly abstract, so in order to make it easier to approach these questions we show you concrete examples below each question. Please use it as a reference.
Topic 1: How will science develop in the future?
For example...
- How will artificial intelligence develop?
- Will humans be destroyed by self-created technologies?
- How far can the Life Sciences develop?
- How is genetic engineering changing the world?
- Can you imagine the Earth in one hundred thousand years?
Topic 2: What is the Science?
For example...
- Are scientific facts true?
- Why do we do science? Is science necessary?
- Does/should science take the place of Religion?
- What is the scientific view of religion?
- What should the relationship between Science and Religion be?
- Is the changing of world by science a good thing or a bad thing?
Topic 3: What is a human being?
For example...
- Is a person special? What is the difference between humans and animals?
- Would a robot that has the identical cognitive function of a human be human?
- How do you recognize humanity?
- What is our consciousness?
Topic 4: Feelings occur commonly in our lives, but what are they?
For example...
- Love on earth
- What is sense of values?
- Why is health important? How important is it?
- Why do people demand a meaning in life?
- What will the life of the scientist be?
Topic 5: What is "OMOROI" (interesting) study?
For example...
- Useful vs "OMOROI". Why is "OMOROI" important?
- How to make intellectual curiosity. Why does intellectual curiosity happen?
- What is "OMOROI" in terms of research, researcher, university, country and life?
- Why is science "OMOROI"? Let's discuss a scientific dream!
- Is there not the interesting idea that tells scientific fragility to the society?
Excursion
Together with your group you will explore the sights of Kyoto. While exploring Japanese culture in a relaxed atmosphere members can discuss research, culture or any topic freely.
We hope to increase our understanding between scientific fields but also across cultural borders.
Schedule
