Disclaimer: machine translated by DeepL which may contain errors.
Professor Mikiko Shiomi and Associate Professor Sousuke Ito Receive the Commendation from the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology
Communications & Public Relations Committee
Top: Professor Mikiko Shiomi
Bottom: Associate Professor Sousuke Ito
Professor Mikiko Shiomi of the Department of Biological Sciences and Associate Professor Sousuke Ito of the Universal Biology Institute have received the Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology for the year 2024. This award is given to those who have achieved outstanding results in research and development in science and technology. We would like to extend our sincere congratulations to Dr. Shiomi and wish him continued success in his future endeavors.
Professor Shiomi received the Science and Technology Award for his research on the molecular mechanism of piRNA, which is essential for the maintenance of fertility. RNA silencing, in which small RNA molecules in cells suppress gene function, plays an important role in biological activities. Professor Shiomi and his colleagues have elucidated the function of small RNA molecules (piRNAs) that protect the genome from being destroyed in reproductive tissues. piRNA function is essential for maintaining fertility. This research may contribute to the development of new drugs and diagnostic systems that are expected to be effective in the treatment of infertility, as well as to solving the problem of declining birthrates that Japan faces.
Associate Professor Ito received the Young Scientist Award for his work on "Non-equilibrium thermodynamics based on information geometry. In recent years, there has been a lot of research on the thermodynamic properties of non-equilibrium systems with stochastic behavior, such as Brownian motion and molecular motors. Associate Professor Ito has deepened the information-theoretic aspects of nonequilibrium thermodynamics and found a universal law that describes the relationship between energy dissipation and the accuracy of information processing, which is applicable to biological systems. These research results are expected to contribute to our understanding of energy dissipation in information processing and to the development of the mathematics of information processing, and to be applied to the development of energy-saving devices and machine learning methods in the future.
In addition, Associate Professor Kohei Iwaki (Department of Mathematics), Associate Professor Hitomi Yanaka, and Associate Professor Naoto Yokoya (Department of Information Science) from the Faculty of Science were awarded the Young Scientists' Prize by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. We would like to extend our congratulations to them.
The Communications & Public Relations Committee re-edited the congratulatory articles written by Professor Takehiko Kobayashi (Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, Prof. Shiomi) and Associate Professor Riki Furusawa (Universal Biology Institute, Associate Professor Ito).
Published in Faculty of Science News May 2024