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KIST’s Brain Science Institute Collaborates with RIKEN’s Center for Brain Science (October 11, 2022)
- Date : 2022-10-11
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KIST's Brain Science Institute Collaborates with RIKEN's Center for Brain Science
The Brain Science Institute (Director-General: Jin Hyun Kim) at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST; President: Seok-Jin Yoon) and the RIKEN Center for Brain Science (CBS; Director: Ryohiro Kageyama) held a joint symposium for mutual research cooperation on October 11, 2022 and signed a cooperation agreement at KIST at 1:30 p.m. that day.
The cooperation agreement was promoted as part of the "Brain Science Institute 2030" development plan established in 2021 to facilitate the two institutions attaining global recognition through personnel exchanges.
In order to identify fields with high potential for practical research cooperation, KIST and RIKEN held their first joint symposium online on May 23, 2022 to introduce the main areas their respective researchers are studying. Based on this, a second joint symposium was held offline at KIST in Seoul on October 11, 2022 to select specific cooperative topics and strengthen networking among researchers. Dr. Min-Ho Nam of the KIST Brain Science Institute and Dr. Jun Nagai of the RIKEN Center for Brain Science also reported on the progress made on research cooperation discussions over the past few months.
On the same day, researchers from both institutions announced through an MoU that they will continue to establish partnerships in fields related to brain science research, such as brain neurobiology, brain disease models, and brain neuroscience, even after the conclusion of the Global Mobility Program in 2022, in order to promote international cooperation among KIST’s projects. In the mid- to long-term, KIST announced its plan to establish information exchanges and strategic partnerships in brain science and various other fields by establishing an overseas hub in Japan.
Director-General Jin Hyun Kim said, "This cooperation agreement is a turning point that can accelerate the globalization of the KIST Brain Science Institute as well as the establishment of cooperation between our two institutions," adding, "We hope that Dr. Thomas McHugh, who is additionally a foreign researcher at the RIKEN Center for Brain Science, will become a cornerstone of brain science research." In addition, he stated, "We have decided to invite the RIKEN Center for Brain Science to hold the 3rd joint symposium with the KIST Brain Science Institute in the first half of 2023."
RIKEN has a history spanning more than 100 years in Japan and is conducting high-quality basic and applied science and technology research worldwide, while also recruiting a number of foreign researchers to promote globalization first. The RIKEN Center for Brain Science is a key organization carrying out Brain/MINDS, a large project at the Japanese governmental level seeking to establish anatomical and genetic brain maps for Marmoset monkeys.