Visitors from the Institute of CAS Institute of Microbiology

　On October 27, 2015, IMSUT welcomed Director-General Shuang Jiang Liu and Dr. Juncai Ma from the Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMCAS).

　IMSUT established three collaboration sites in fiscal 2005 in China, two in Beijing and one in Harbin, and conducted China-Japan research collaboration, for two 5-year terms (fiscal 2005-2010; 2010-2015), supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology. In 2015, IMSUT launched the China-Japan Research Collaboration on Defense against Emerging and Reemerging Infections, a new 5-year J-GRID program of the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED). The Institute of Microbiology, represented by Director-General Shuang Jiang Liu, is our counterpart in China, and belongs to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), a large national institution consisting of more than 100 research institutes all over China.

　They received a warm welcome from Professor Yoshinori Murakami (Dean of IMSUT), Professor Keiya Ozawa (IMSUT Hospital Director) and Professor Sumiko Watanabe (Chief, Committee of International Exchange).
There, both parties thanked each other for the great efforts they had devoted to the collaborative research in the past and committed to developing much stronger ties between them in the future.
During their visit, they met with Professor Yasushi Kawaguchi (Deputy Dean of IMSUT and Project Director), Professor Jun-ichiro Inoue (Chief of China-Japan Joint Laboratories in Beijing) , Project Professor Mitsue Hayashi (Beijing Project Office) and other IMSUT scientists working in the joint-lab to discuss how future research collaboration should be conducted and promoted.

　Also, they made a short tour of IMSUT facilities such as the Pathogenic Microbes Repository Unit, the supercomputer room and Bio Bank Japan. They received a brief introduction to each facility and its mission, and asked about the facilities with great interest.

　We hope this visit will encourage a further expansion of friendly and cooperative ties between Japan and China through collaborative research.