News

2018-06-29

Prof. Satoshi Aoki's one day lecture was held on June 26

On June 26, Professor Satoshi Aoki (Kobe Univ.) gave a series of lectures about "computational algebraic statistics and its applications". His lecture is about application of the Grobner basis to statistic theory. Lecture 1 was an introduction to ideal of polynomial rings and its relation to the Grobner basis. In Lecture 2, he explained Grobner basis in design of experiments. In Lecture 3, he explained Grobner basis in statistical hypothesis with contingency tables. There were more than 30 participants from inside and outside of RIKEN. Background of the participants are mathematics, statistics, physics, biology, information science and medical science. There were many questions from the participants on the mathematical and practical aspects of the Grobner basis, and the lively discussions continued at the time of lunch and coffee break. This lecture turns out to be a model case of having both mathematicians and practitioners together to discuss the power of mathematics and it applications.

2018-06-25

Self-introduction: Shun Furusawa

Hello, I am Shun Furusawa, a special postdoctoral researcher of iTHEMS. I received a PhD at Waseda University in September 2013 and then I worked at NAOJ and FIAS as a posdoc. My research area is Nuclear Astrophysics. I am interested in birth, life, and death of various stars and related nuclear physics. At present, I am working on death of massive stars and birth of quark stars. I am looking forward to chatting and discussing with the iTHEMS members.

2018-06-22

Modeling the functions of condensin in chromosome shaping and segregation

Former iTHES fellow, Yuji Sakai (Univ. Tokyo) together with Atsushi Mochizuki (iTHEMS), Masashi Tachikawa (iTHEMS), Tetsuya Hirano (RIKEN) and Kazuhisa Kinoshita (RIKEN) have published a paper and a press release. Immediately before a cell divides, chromosomal DNA in a eukaryotic cell is packaged into a discrete set of rod-shaped chromosomes. This process, known as mitotic chromosome assembly or condensation, secures the faithful segregation of genetic information into daughter cells. Central to this mechanistically complex process is a class of protein complexes known as condensins. However, how condensins support the assembly and segregation of mitotic chromosomes at a mechanistic level remains elusive. Here we construct a coarse-grained physical model of chromosomal DNA fibers and condensin molecules, and study how condensins work in the mitotic chromosome assembly using computer simulations. Our results show that two activities of condensins, formation of consecutive loops in chromosomal DNA fibers and inter-condensin attractions, are necessary for both the shaping and segregation of mitotic chromosomes, and balancing acts of these activities help to coordinate the efficient progress of the processes. Importantly, chromosome shaping and segregation in our results are strongly correlated, implying that they are controlled by the same underlying mechanism mediated by condensins.

2018-06-18

The Journalist in Residence Workshop was held from June 1 to June 4

From June 1 to June 4, Journalist in Residence Workshop was held at Tambara Institute of Mathematical Sciences of the University of Tokyo, located in a high-plain nature park 1,200 meters above sea level and 140 kilometers north of Tokyo. The "Journalist in Residence (JIR)" program in Mathematics started in 2010 with the support of the Mathematical Society of Japan. By the program, journalists in a broad sense stay at major math departments and institutes in Japan and talk to people (professors, students, visitors, librarians), attend seminars and conferences. The program aims to enhance the relationships between mathematicians and the general public. Then Journalist in Residence Workshop started in 2011 aiming to exchange information of JIR in different institutes among the participants as well as among host institutions. The workshop also fuctions as outreach of institutions. RIKEN iTHEMS began hosting this workshop from last year. This year, there were 10 journarists and 11 participants from RIKEN, 6 from universities and 3 from others. Young participants of RIKEN iTHEMS mainly explained their recent important achievements to the nonspecialists and matured participants explained thier experiences on academic journalism. The whether during the JIR workshop of this year was very nice and the participants hiked together around the Tambara marsh and the Tambara lake. The disscussion among the participants continued with joy until late in the evening.

2018-06-18

Self-introduction: Genki Ouchi

I am Genki Ouchi, a SPDR of iTHEMS. I am a mathematician. My research field is algebraic geometry. In algebraic geometry, we study algebraic varieties, that is, spaces described by algebraic equations. Recently, I am interested in symmetry of algebraic varieties: infinite symmetry via complex dynamics and finite symmetry via finite groups. When I study such subjects, I often use mathematical notion related to string theory like derived categories of coherent sheaves, Bridgeland stability conditions and elliptic genera etc. I would like to find interesting geometric phenomena inspired by outside of algebraic geometry. Moreover, I am happy if there are application of algebras (or mathematics) to other research fields.

2018-06-11

iTHEMS Colloquium was held on June 7

Prof. Yasumasa Nishiura gave a lecture at iTHEMS Colloquium which was taken place June 7th. His lecture was entitled "On the interplay between intrinsic and extrinsic instabilities of spatially localized patterns" and various patterns emerge from rather simple sets of differential equations were introduced. According to the lecture, spatially localized dissipative structures are observed in various fields, such as neural signaling, chemical reactions, discharge patterns, granular materials, vegetated landscapes, binary convection and block copolymer nanoparticles. Now, while these patterns are much simpler than single living cells, yet they seem to inherit several characteristic "living state" features, such as generation of new patterns, self-replication, switching to new dynamics via collisions and adaptive morphological changes to environments. Prof. Nishiura explained that these behaviors stem from an interplay between the intrinsic instability of each localized pattern and the strength of external signals. The global geometric interrelation amongst all relevant solution branches of a corresponding system with approximate unfolding parameters was explored. He argued that a global geometric structure formed by all relevant solution branches gives us much more insight rather than conventional PDE approaches. The theme of the lecture was most pertinent to iTHEMS colloquium and the audience was fascinated by the power of the mathematical insight applied to varied subjects and phenomena.

2018-06-11

Self-introduction: Ade Irma Suriajaya

Hello! My name is Ade Irma Suriajaya but people usually call me simply Chacha. I am originally from Indonesia and I made the nickname from my Chinese name, another name I have which is not officially registered, except in my college documents. I went to Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in China after graduating from high school in Indonesia to pursue undergraduate study in Aeronautical Engineering. I was attracted to Mathematics in just my first month, thanks to the very interesting Calculus class I had back then. I got my first opportunity to study pure mathematics two years later when I got a scholarship for a one-year academic exchange program in Nagoya University in Japan. However I could not do that without sufficient Japanese proficiency, but I was finally able to take basic pure mathematics courses (designed for third semester students) the next semester, and I made up my mind to change my major to Mathematics. Nevertheless, there was no pure mathematics major in my home university in China and during the last year of my undergraduate study, I was taking only mathematics classes offered by the applied mathematics major (the official name was not Applied Mathematics). I managed to come back to Japan the year after, soon after I got my bachelor degree to finally, officially start my path in mathematics. This year marks the seventh year I work in analytic number theory. My main research interest is the analytic properties of zeta functions and L-functions such as, location of zeros and distribution of values of these special functions. I am very delighted to be a part of iTHEMS where I get to easily communicate with other theoretical scientists. I used to be more into Physics and Chemistry when I was in middle school and high school and I am very happy to get to know lots of new things, not only in those fields, but also in other fields of science. Furthermore, I am mostly excited to be able to collaborate with other scientists and hopefully apply my (still very very limited) knowledge in mathematics and also probably, the more limited knowledge in engineering or applied mathematics.

2018-06-05

Neutron Life from Supercomputer Simulations

Jason Chang (iTHEMS/LBNL) and his colleagues have enlisted powerful supercomputers to calculate a quantity known as the "nucleon axial coupling," – which is central to our understanding of a neutron’s lifetime – with an unprecedented precision. Their method offers a clear path to further improvements that may help to resolve the experimental discrepancy of the lifetime of neutrons as well as to learn about as-yet undiscovered physics. The paper was published was published online May 30 in the journal Nature.

2018-06-04

Self-introduction: Tomoki Ozawa

I am Tomoki Ozawa, a senior research scientist at iTHEMS. I am originally from Japan. I finished my PhD in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the US, and then spent five years as a postdoc at the BEC Center (Bose-Einstein Condensation Center) at the University of Trento in Italy. Then, after spending three months in Brussels, Belgium, I came back to Japan and joined RIKEN iTHEMS this April. My main research interest is in the intersection between condensed matter theory and AMO (Atomic, Molecuar and Optics) theory. In particular, I have been working on many-body and topological physics of ultracold atomic gases and photonics. My style of research is to try to understand target systems in as simple way as possible; this sounds rather trivial, but it often leads to something unexpected in the end. In iTHEMS, I hope to collaborate with people from various backgrounds and start something exciting together.

2018-05-28

Self-introduction: Masaru Hongo

I am Masaru Hongo, a theoretical physicist working on nonequilibrium physics. My main interest is hydrodynamics and its possible generalizations to more general nonequilibrium systems. Hydrodynamics universally describes a lot of phenomena seen in the world. Its application covers not only simple liquids in our daily life, but also the extremely high temperature plasma (the so-called quark-gluon plasma which reaches at several trillion Kelvin). Since our fluid is composed of atoms/molecules, or extremely elementary particles described by quantum theory, it is interesting to consider how we can understand the gap between two descriptions. I have studied to bridge this gap between hydrodynamics, which gives a macroscopic description of systems, and quantum field theories, which is a fundamental microscopic theory considered to be state-of-the-art atomism. Based on the recent development of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, I have provided a solid basis for relativistic hydrodynamics. I am now working on how we can describe the more general nonequilibrium systems. I am happy if we are interacting with each other, and have fruitful collaborations!

2018-05-24

Using the K computer, scientists predict exotic “di-Omega” particle

Based on complex simulations of quantum chromodynamics performed using the K computer, one of the most powerful computers in the world, the HAL QCD Collaboration, made up of scientists from the RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-based Science and the RIKEN Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS) program, together with colleagues from a number of universities, have predicted a new type of “dibaryon”—a particle that contains six quarks instead of the usual three. Studying how these elements form could help scientists understand the interactions among elementary particles in extreme environments such as the interiors of neutron stars or the early universe moments after the Big Bang.

2018-05-21

Self-introduction: Takashi Okada

I am Takashi Okada. I am a senior research scientist of iTHEMS from this spring. Previously, I was a postdoc researcher of Mochizuki Theoretical Biology Laboratory (April 2014 to March 2018). My original background is theoretical physics, and, before I came to Mochizuki Laboratory, I researched on particle physics and super string theory. Now, my main research subject is theoretical biology, and, especially, I am interested in biological networks, such as gene regulatory networks, metabolic networks, and signal transduction networks. I would like to understand how today’s biological networks arise through evolutionary processes. I think that iTHEMS is the best environment to study theoretical biology because life science is a very broad field that involves mathematics, physics, chemistry, statistics, and so on. I would like to learn a lot through interaction with iTHEMS members. Also, I am very happy if we can collaborate with each other.

2018-05-21

Graduate-Level Research in Industrial Projects for Students (GRIPS)-Sendai 2018

Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM) at UCLA offers several versions of its Research in Industrial Projects for Students (RIPS) program, a summer research experience for students of math and related disciplines. Students work in teams on projects sponsored by industry. GRISP-Sendai 2018 on this summer will be held in Tohoku Univ. and iTHEMS cohosts this program. Contact: Hiroshi Suito (iTHEMS Senior Research Scientist and AIMR, Tohoku Univ.) ​hiroshi.suito@tohoku.ac.jp

2018-05-21

Catherine Beauchemin gave a short talk at Nerd Nite Tokyo on May 11

On Friday, May 11, Catherine Beauchemin gave a short talk at Nerd Nite Tokyo. She told the public that health science has serious issues with reproducibility of experiment results, and that the research culture incentivizes positive results rather than sound experiments. This is why you get reports in successive months about how eggs are unhealthy, then healthy. Or how a medical practice used for 20 years to reduce post-surgery infections actually makes them more likely. According to Catherine, if doctors and health scientists want to be trusted more, they need to better communicate the uncertainty of results, do fewer (but larger) experiments to produce more robust results, and accept that negative results are just as worthy of publication as positive results. She also talked about how health science has math problems. Too many people in that field don't understand math/statistics well, and blindly trust equations even when those equations are misapplied and give incorrect results. There is a big opportunity for scientists with a background in math to work with health scientists and improve the quality of research in a field that is important for everyone. She is already starting a project along these lines -- please join her to promote the goals of iTHEMS and health sciences! And if you want to speak at a future Nerd Nite about your own research, please contact Don Warren (donald.warren@riken.jp) for information.

2018-05-15

Science Frontier Lectures in the University of Tokyo by iTHEMS Reserchers

iTHEMS Researchers started to give a series of lectures "Frontiers in Physics Science: Universe, Matter, Life and Information" to the undergraduate students in Univ. of Tokyo on every Wed. (16:50-18:35) from this semester. April 11, 18, 25: Y. Inoue, "Blackholes and the history of our universe" May 2, 9: Y. Yokokura, "What is spacetime? - exploring from blackhole and information -" May 16, 23: M. Tachikawa, "Cell Biology from mathematical point of view" June 6, 13: J Fawcett, "Genome informatics" June 20, 27: T. Doi, "Looking into supercomputer and looking out from supercomputer" July 4, 11: M. Taki, "How deep leaning becomes smart." Contact: Takashi Tsuboi (iTHEMS Deputy Director) tsuboi@ms.u-tokyo.ac.jp

2018-05-14

Self-introduction: Yoshiyuki Inoue

Hello everyone. My name is Yoshiyuki Inoue. I am a senior research scientist at iTHEMS/RIKEN. Previously, I was a JSPS fellow at KIPAC/SLAC/Stanford, and then an International Top Young Fellow at ISAS/JAXA. My research is theoretical astrophysics which is closely connected to observations. I am interested in understanding the nature of supermassive black holes. Here at iTHEMS, I would like to link theory and observations more tightly. I am also hoping to broaden my research fields through interdisciplinary interactions at iTHEMS.

2018-05-11

Jeffrey Fawcett (Senior Research Scientist, iTHEMS) was mentioned in an article on theoretical genetics of racehorses by Prof. Hideki Innan (Graduate University for Advanced Studies)

Jefferey has been working closely on this subject with Hideki. The article is published in a book "Master of Paper Owner Game" (Complete Guide, 2018-2019).

2018-05-11

Shigehiro Nagataki (Deputy Program Director, iTHEMS) was featured in RIKEN NEWS, pp.02-05, No. 443 (2018 May issue) with the title "Why the massive stars explode?"

2018-05-09

Call for workshop proposals from AIMaP

2018-05-07

iTHEMS Colloquium was held on April 23

iTHEMS Colloquium was held on April 23rd, inviting Dr. Kazuhiro Sakurada, Deputy Program Director of RIKEN Medical Sciences Innovation Hub Program, also at Sony CSL, and Dr. Jun Seita, Unit Leader of AI based Healthcare and Medical Data Analysis Standardization Unit, RIKEN Medical Sciences Innovation Hub Program as the lecturers. Dr. Sakurada gave the lecture first, entitled "The Description of biological phenomena as open system." There, he explained his approach to describe the life-course changes of individual people by applying the discretization model and Markov chain model. Then followed Dr. Seita’s lecture, which is entitled "Every Biological Variable has a Different Dynamic-range." He introduced an open platform for objective gene expression profiling named Gene Expression Commons. Their lectures exhibited the power of the interdisciplinary research in the most perspicuous way.

2018-04-23

iTHEMS participated RIKEN’s open-day on April 21

For the first time, iTHEMS participated RIKEN’s open-day last Saturday. Six researchers from iTHEMS gave short lectures for the public at our seminar room in Japanese. Those were: Tomoki Ozawa on Mathematics bridges classical and quantum physics; Jeffery Fawcett on deciphering the enigma of life; Yuki Yokokura on physics of black holes; Yoshiyuki Inoue on the observation of black holes; Takashi Okada on the network in life science; Masato Taki on Do AIs dream of electric sheep? The event was huge success. Every lecture attracted more audience than we can fit in the seminar room. Next year, we should do the lectures in a larger room. Thank you all the lecturers, especially Taki-san and Yokokura-san who arranged the event.

2018-04-12

iTHEMS researchers lecture at the University of Tokyo

In this semester (April to July), iTHEMS members give lectures to the students of University of Tokyo for first and second graders.

2018-04-10

iTHEMS Starter Meeting for FY2018 on April 6, 2018

More than 50 researchers from various disciplines (biology, physics, astronomy, mathematics, information science, computational science) got together and self-introduced each other at the iTHEMS common room 246-248 on April 6 12:30-15:00. There were also participants from Kobe and Kyoto through internet. Great enthusiasm to interact with each other could be seen already in this starter meeting, which forecasts a bright future of iTHEMS!

2018-04-07

iTHEMS on Youtube!

2018-04-05

Takemasa Miyoshi (Deputy Program Director, iTHEMS) to receive the Gold Medal Prize from Yomiuri Techno Forum