Speakers

Masatoshi Takeichi received his doctorate from Kyoto University in 1973, and then accepted a research fellowship at the Carnegie Institution Department of Embryology in 1974. He then returned to Kyoto University, and attained a professorship in the same university in 1986. He was the founding director of RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology (2000–2014). Masatoshi is best known for the discovery of cadherins—homophilic cell adhesion molecules required for tissue assembly during animal development. He and his team established that the cadherin superfamily plays a wide range of roles in cell communication in multicellular organisms, such as cell motility, tissue polarity, neural wiring, and brain organization. Outside of his research activities, Masatoshi is also known as a nature lover and an avid bird watcher. Masatoshi is the recipient of many honors, including the Ross Harrison Prize, Asahi Prize, Person of Cultural Merit, Japan Prize, and is a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences, USA and an associate member of EMBO.

Miki Ebisuya (European Molecular Biology Laboratory Barcelona, Spain)
Gohta Goshima (Nagoya University, Japan)
Takashi Hiiragi (European Molecular Biology Laboratory Heidelberg, Germany)
Tsuyoshi Hirashima (Kyoto University, Japan)
Hokto Kazama (RIKEN Center for Brain Science, Japan)
Jun Kitano (National Institute of Genetics, Japan)
Erina Kuranaga (Tohoku University, Japan)
Toru Miura (The University of Tokyo, Japan)
Kazunari Miyamichi (RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research, Japan)
Fumio Motegi (Temasek Lifesciences Laboratory, Singapore）
Keiko Nonomura (National Institute for Basic Biology, Japan)
Ken Sato (Gunma University, Japan)
Keiko Sugimoto (RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science, Japan)