Aiming for understanding of different fields through interdisciplinary studies

Q　What was your motivation for joining the program, and what about the program appeals to you?

I applied for the program because I wanted to learn a wide range of knowledge other than my specialty, bioinformatics. Students with diverse background knowledge from the three graduate schools of Information Science Technology, Frontier Biosciences, and engineering science are participating, and while teaching and learning each other’s specialized knowledge through the curriculum, they can deepen their knowledge of both major and minor. I think that is one of the attractions. In addition, we received support such as lectures and advisories from many companies, and I was able to learn about the perspectives of industry that are rarely touched on in my daily research.

Q　What is your expertise and how do you want to develop it with the program?

I specialize in metabolic engineering that analyzes the metabolic state of cells, makes computer predictions, and controls cells to the desired state. Innumerable chemical reactions are occurring in parallel in the living body, and these are called metabolic reactions. Although it is not possible to actually see how the metabolic reaction is progressing, it is possible to estimate the intracellular metabolism by considering the intracellular chemical reaction as a linear programming problem under some assumptions. Through specialized research, I am learning genetic engineering techniques necessary for the construction of genetically engineered strains, analysis techniques for the extracellular environment, which are important for predicting metabolism, and intracellular metabolism simulation techniques. In this program, I want to work with students who can handle mechanical and electronic components to build an experimental system that evaluates the exchange of substances and ecology between bacterial cells in the bacterial flora.

Q　What are your future dreams and goals?

I would like to lead cross-disciplinary research activities with a variety of technologies and multifaceted perspectives. In order to deal with various problems that suddenly emerge in the ever-changing modern society, not only human resources with specialized expertise in one field but also scientists who understand the problems across fields are leading the way, is required. Taking the recent COVID-19 epidemic as an example, medicine and physiology to understand the etiology of infectious diseases, social science to predict and control people’s behaviors and relationships, and construction and reading of vast data models. Many scientists, such as statistics, are working on solving problems. Under these circumstances, human resources with a cross-disciplinary perspective can propose innovative innovations that make use of multiple expertise and solve problems in each field to quickly determine problem-solving solutions. I think I can contribute while deepening one’s own specialty through specialized research, the goal is to acquire expertise in other fields through integrated research and to demonstrate interactivity to feed back to one’s own research field.