COI-NEXT Annual Symposium: Sustaining Innovation Beyond the lab

This symposium will focus on a fundamental challenge facing socially valuable research: how to sustain innovations that deliver clear public benefit but lack commercial viability. Many researchers develop impactful solutions (such as coral reef restoration methods or support frameworks for ADHD-affected families) and may even pilot them successfully. Yet once initial funding ends, there is often no clear pathway to maintain or scale these outcomes over time.

Because these solutions do not naturally attract paying customers or traditional business investment, their long-term sustainability is far from straightforward. Through this symposium, we aim to openly discuss this gap and explore practical models, partnerships, and institutional approaches that can help ensure such critical innovations remain accessible to society beyond the research phase.

Please register here

The registration deadline is February 23.

Keynote Speakers

Hiroaki Kitano   Project Leader, COI-NEXT Program at OIST
Yuji Sakuno   Project Leader, COI-NEXT Program at Hiroshima University
Pinaki Chakraborty Professor, OIST
Takuji Hiroishi    CEO of empublic Ltd.
Gil Granot Mayer   Executive Vice President for Innovation and Outreach, OIST

You can see the detailed agenda from here.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to coi-next@oist.jp