Dr. ZHANG Yaping, Vice-President of CAS visited IMSUT

On April 26, 2017, IMSUT welcomed Dr. ZHANG Yapin, Vice-President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and 4 members of his delegation. CAS is China’s largest national research organization of science and technology, with 56 000 researchers pursuing high technology and natural science at 124 institutes spread across the country. Its annual research budget is 21.3 billion yuan (more than 300 billion yen).(data as of 2012)

In 2005 IMSUT established Japan-China collaboration research laboratories in two life science research institutes of CAS in Beijing, one in the Institute of Microbiology, and one in the Institute of Biophysics. Since 2015 with support from the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED), IMSUT has been carrying out the “China-Japan Research Collaboration on Defense against Emerging and Reemerging Infections” program together with the same CAS reaseach institutes.

The visitors received a warm welcome from the IMSUT Dean, Prof. Yoshinori Murakami. And Vice-Deans Prof. Mutsuhiro Takekawa, Prof. Yasushi Kawaguchi, Prof. Hirotoshi Tanaka as well as Prof. Junichiro Inoue (Director of Beijing Sites) and Project Prof. Mitsue Hayashi. An Overview of IMSUT was introduced and the two sides discussed future joint research and cooperation between CAS and IMSUT.

After the discussion, the delegation visited a P3A room (BSL3) and a two-photon excitation microscope owned by Prof. Yoshihiro Kawaoka’s laboratory. Dr. Zhang, specialist in molecular evolution and genetics, showed lively interest with his many questions.

As IMSUT and CAS deepen their cooperation, there are great expectations for the future development of Japan-China joint research activities.

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