This webinar aims to focus on the impact that climate change is having on oceans and marine life and the effects this will have on the U.S., Japan, and the world.

Panelists include Dr. Robert Dunbar, Professor, Earth System Science, Stanford University; Dr. Timothy Ravasi, Professor, Marine Climate Change Unit, OIST, and Dr. Alex Wegmann, Director of Science for the Palmyra Program, The Nature Conservancy.

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This webinar is the first of the U.S. - Japan Dialogue Series on the future of climate, presented by the OIST Foundation. 

“Islands” are often compared to the concept of canaries in the coal mine when it comes to climate change. It is on islands that we often see the initial signs of climate change and where it can have rapid impact on biodiversity and signal changes that will soon be coming to other parts of the world.

Join the OIST Foundation as we  explore this topic with panelists  Dr. Evan Economo (Professor, Biodiversity and Biocomplexity Unit – OIST) along with Dr. Rosemary Gillespie (Professor and Schlinger Chair of Systematics, Essig Museum of Entomology, UC Berkeley) and Dr. George Roderick (William Muriece Hoskins Professor, Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management – UC Berkeley), who have both been engaged in working on such issues on Pacific Islands for the past 30 years.

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This public panel will explore cybersecurity from US and Japanese perspectives, including issues of trust and transparency and regional cooperation; as well as the geopolitics of submarine cables. Providing insights from both industry and academia in Japan and the United States, it promises to be an engaging session on critical topics for our shared future.

Following the public panel, Pacific Forum Young Leaders Program Director Ariel Stenek will lead an informational session about the program and its offerings, as well as answer questions. Attendees will join breakout rooms where they can connect virtually, share research interests, and discuss the day’s most pressing topics. OIST graduate students and young researchers are invited to participate.

Click here to see more info and register.

Join the OIST Foundation for a presentation and discussion with two world-renowned architects on 1) the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University’s (OIST) revolutionary elements, 2) OIST’s unique properties, and 3) OIST’s bold challenges. Presenters Kenneth Kornberg and Takashi Okamoto were the chief architects who designed much of OIST’s campus.

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The phrase "A square peg in a round hole" means something or someone conforming to unsuitable surroundings.  It's an unsolved conjecture over a century old that given any shape of hole - in other words any closed curve in the plane - you can always find four points on the curve that form the vertices of a square.  This says that square pegs can be made to fit into any shape hole, not just into square ones! I'll talk about this conjecture, its history, recent progress, and surprising and beautiful connections with famously one-sided surfaces such as the Moebius strip and the Klein bottle.

Andrew Lobb was an undergraduate at Oxford University and then took up a Kennedy Scholarship at Harvard University for his PhD studies.  During these studies, he became interested in low-dimensional topology and wrote his thesis on applications of quantum knot invariants to 4-dimensional problems. Dr. Lobb moved back to the UK for a postdoctoral position at Imperial College London, then returned to the USA for second postdoc at Stony Brook which included six months leave to take part in a program at MSRI.  He has been at Durham University in the UK since 2011.

Learn how genes from Neanderthals still influence us from one of the most outstanding leaders in the field of evolutionary genetics. Dr. Pääbo will discuss how Neanderthal gene variants influence fertility, pain sensitivity and severity of SARS-COV-2 infections in people today.

Svante Pääbo is Director, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology & Adjunct Professor at OIST.

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We are pleased to announce that this public webinar is rescheduled to Wednesday, September 16 (JST).

Dr. Rita Colwell, one of the most eminent scientists of our time and a member of OIST's Board of Governors, will share her insights into global challenges facing the planet today ranging from the health of oceans to climate change to disease. In addition, she will highlight elements of her new book, A Lab of One’s Own, about the challenges women face in the field of science and how this can be changed.

Register here.

(Please kindly note that you will need to re-register even if you previously signed up for this event.) 

Moderated by one of the most outstanding women in the Japanese corporate sector today, and broadcast live from Tokyo, Okinawa, and New York, this webinar presents a conversation between entrepreneurs, business strategists and innovation leaders, which will lead to some practical suggestions for participants interested in exploring entrepreneurship in Japan.

Register here: https://oistfoundation.org/webinars/

Strengthening transnational bonds in the era of online connections: Research and Educational Exchange in the U.S., Japan, and the Philippines
Sponsored by: Fulbright Japan, Fulbright Philippines, OIST Foundation

To register: click here