OIST COI-NEXT Annual Symposium 2026 Sustaining Innovation Beyond the Lab Date: March 9th, 2026, at 9:30-17:00 Venue: Sydney Brenner Lecture Theater (B250) Target audience: General audience/ open to everyone at OIST and beyond. Registration Deadline: February 26, 2026

OIST Science Challenge is a unique opportunity for participants to extend their scientific education and experience research at OIST.

This public lecture will be held in Japanese only, with no interpretation provided.

パブリック・レクチャー　『和音の科学』

日時：2026年3月7日（土）14:00-15:00（開場 13:30）

場所：OIST サイエンススタジオ　ゆんラボ・未来館（読谷村総合情報総合センター）

講演者：東京大学生産技術研究所教授　羽田野 直道博士

講演言語：日本語

対象：中学生以上

定員：70名

登録開始日：2026年2月24日（火）

参加費：無料

TSVP Talk Language: English (no interpretation). Target audience: General audience / everyone at OIST and beyond. Freely accessible to all OIST members and guests without registration (also via Zoom).

Mirror Lab Symposium: Frontiers in Recent Human Evolution

We will describe and discuss projects that explore genetic variants that emerged in the evolution of modern and archaic humans, and how such archaic variants affects humans today. We will also discuss projects that use ancient DNA to reconstruct the early peopling and history of the Japanese Archipelago. We will explore how we can intensify our collaborations in these areas and brainstorm about future research directions.

Guest seminar hosted by CDQT.

Speaker: Prof. Jeroen van den Brink (Institute for Theoretical Solid State Physics, IFW Dresden)

Title: Topological surface superconductivity in PtBi2

Workshop on Cognitive Neurorobotics

Organized by Jun Tani, Tani Unit, OIST

March 5, 13:30—18:00, Seminar room L5D23, Lab 5

Tentative program

13:30-13:40: Introduction, Jun Tani, OIST

13:40-14:40: Collective Intelligence in LLM agents, Takashi Ikegami, Univ. of Tokyo

14:40-15:40: Deep Active Inference for Real-World Robotic Systems, Shingo Murata, Keio Univ.

15:40-16:00: Coffee break

16:00-17:00: A Consideration of Robot Foundation Models as Embodied Intelligence, Tetsuya Ogata, Waseda Univ.

17:00-18:00: Propagation of Mind Through the Mechanism of Superposition, Hiro Iizuka, Hokkaido Univ.

Language: English

QG Seminar Speaker: Will Horowitz (University of Cape Town) Title: Hamilton Revisited: The Action Principle for Initial Value Problems

Title: In-plane oscillations of a slack catenary using assumed modes.

Speaker: Dr. Anindya Chatterjee, Professor, Mechanical Engineering, IIT Kanpur

(collaborators: Bidhayak Goswami and Indrasis Chakraborty)

Join Zoom link

Target audience: Interns, Students, PostDocs, and those who are interested in the same research field. Language: English

The Biological, Artificial, and Quantum Intelligence 2026 International Workshop (BAQ2026) will bring together world-leading experts in neural networks, neuroscience, quantum machine learning, and related areas of intelligence and complexity. It aims to provide a platform for discussions on recent developments and future perspectives in these fields. Open to OIST Community!

OIST Workshop | Website | Main organizer: Tomomi Kiyomitsu (Cell Division Dynamics Unit) | OIST members are welcome to attend all scientific sessions. Meals are closed sessions for registered participants only.

The Graduation Ceremony to award degrees to those who graduated in the period May 2025 to January 2026. The ceremony will take place at the OIST Auditorium on Friday, February 27, 2026.

Moderated by Lauren Ha, Associate Vice President for Technology Development and Innovation, the conversation will explore Kris’s career, current initiatives, and his perspective on the global tech industry. After a 20‑minute interview, the floor will open for audience questions. The event will be followed by a special OIST Teatime in Center Court.

TSVP Talk Language: English (no interpretation). Target audience: General audience / everyone at OIST and beyond. Freely accessible to all OIST members and guests without registration (also via Zoom).

Speaker: Cindy Poo, a senior scientist with the Allen Institute for Neural Dynamics and an Affiliate Assistant Professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Washington

Title: Rocks instead of clocks: Bayesian modelling of the fossil record enlightens the diversification and extinction of Hemiptera in deep time

Abstract: Untangling the patterns and drivers behind the diversification and extinction of highly diversified lineages remains a challenge in evolutionary biology. While insect diversification has been widely studied through the “ Big Four” insect orders (Coleoptera, Hymenoptera, Lepidoptera, and Diptera), the fifth most diverse order, Hemiptera, has often been overlooked. Hemiptera exhibit a rich fossil record and are highly diverse in present-day ecosystems, with many lineages closely associated with their host plants, making them a crucial group for studying how past ecological shifts—such as mass extinctions and floral turnovers—have influenced insect diversification. This study leverages birth-death models in a Bayesian framework and the fossil record of Hemiptera to estimate their past diversity dynamics. Our results reveal that global changes in flora over time significantly shaped the evolutionary trajectories of Hemiptera. Two major faunal turnovers particularly influenced Hemiptera diversification: (i) the aftermath of the Permo-Triassic mass extinction and (ii) the Angiosperm Terrestrial Revolution. Our analyses suggest that diversification of Hemiptera clades was driven by floristic shifts combined with competitive pressures from overlapping ecological niches. Leveraging the extensive fossil record of Hemiptera allowed us to refine our understanding of diversification patterns across major hemipteran lineages. We also the recently developed Bayesian Brownian Bridge model, which estimates the timing of lineage origin and extinction through fossil-based Bayesian modelling, to provide a temporal framework for the rise and fall of 310 major hemipteran lineages.

TSVP Talk Language: English (no interpretation). Target audience: General audience / everyone at OIST and beyond. Freely accessible to all OIST members and guests without registration (also via Zoom).

This talk will explore some aspects of non-smooth Lorentzian geometry, the mathematical framework underlying Einstein’s general relativity, which is currently being developed. Just as metric length spaces provide a synthetic generalisation of smooth Riemannian manifolds, the time-separation function plays the role of a “distance” in Lorentzian geometry. The need for a non-smooth Lorentzian framework appeared early on, most famously with Penrose’s singularity theorems. After introducing the basic concepts and some initial results in this synthetic setting, we will turn to causal set theory, a radical approach to quantum gravity in which spacetime is modelled as a discrete causal graph. I will formulate a new notion of curvature, inspired by Ollivier-Ricci curvature on metric graphs, using optimal transport between causal diamonds. We will see that it does recover Ricci curvature on smooth Lorentzian manifolds, and numerical examples will be presented.

旅費相談会を開催いたします。

February 24th (Tue) @A151 Center Bldg. 15:00-16:00

Prof. Mircea Dincă , Department of Chemistry, Princeton University

TSVP Talk Language: English (no interpretation). Target audience: General audience / everyone at OIST and beyond. Freely accessible to all OIST members and guests without registration (also via Zoom).

Speaker: Dr Lewis Picard, Caltech, USA

Title: Entanglement-assisted readout and cooling of neutral atom qubits in an optical tweezer array

A workshop on developing collaboration across sectors to work effectively with community to advance research and activities addressing social challenges.

Speaker: Takuji Hiroishi, CEO, Empublic Inc. , Japanese with English translation

Register

National holiday

Faculty Affairs Office (FAO) is pleased to announce the first Buribushi Mini-Symposium , to be held on Thursday, February 19, 2026 . All OIST faculty, researchers, students, and staff are warmly invited to attend. Come and join us for a fun research talk !

Experience MAXHUB’s latest interactive meeting solutions.

Showcase includes the All-in-One Meeting Board and Microsoft Teams Room devices.

Live demos highlight how these tools enhance communication and meeting efficiency.

MAXHUB の最新インタラクティブ会議ソリューションを体験できる展示イベントです。

All-in-One Meeting Board や Microsoft Teams Room対応デバイス紹介、会議の効率化・可視化を支援する最新テクノロジーを会場でデモします。

TSVP Talk Language: English (no interpretation). Target audience: General audience / everyone at OIST and beyond. Freely accessible to all OIST members and guests without registration (also via Zoom).

QG Seminar (Zoom) Speaker: Nicolas Cresto (Perimeter) Title: sw1+infinity asymptotic symmetries: Carrollian & Celestial lessons

Speaker: Dr Scott Parkins, Associate Professor, The University of Auckland, NZ

Title: Nonclassical light – getting more of it out of a single atom

The 10th OIST-Keio Joint Symposium brings together various perspectives on fluid dynamics, highlighting recent advances across theory, computation, and experiment. Through a series of focused talks and poster presentations, the event spans fundamental flow phenomena, complex and multiscale fluids, and engineering‑relevant applications. This 10th showcase continues a series of events bringing Keio and OIST researchers together to foster discussion and enable innovation through interdisciplinary collaboration.

Japan’s next wave of global innovation is emerging from the south. This roundtable session, co-hosted by OIST Innovation and Kyushu University Kyusokai , explores the strategic potential of the Okinawa–Kyushu axis as a powerhouse for national-level Deep Tech.

Join us to discuss how we can leverage our unique geographic and academic strengths to create a sustainable supply base for world-changing technologies. We will move beyond theory into the practical realities of venture capital and domain-specific scaling.

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TBD

Dr. Jing Yan Haw, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore. Language: English, no interpretation. Open to OIST members.

StrucShare meeting: Demo and hands-on experience by Prof Matthias Wolf

Target audience : Students and researchers in the field

Language : English

Abstract : Supersingular elliptic curves and supersingular Abelian varieties are important mathematical background of modern cryptography.

Speaker: Dr. Oliver Dreesen, Senior Principal Investigator, Cell Aging Laboratory, A*STAR Skin Research Laboratories (A*SRL)

Talk Title: Molecular functions of the nuclear lamina in cell aging & senescence

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Target audience: Interns, Students, PostDocs, and those who are interested in the same research field. Language: English

National holiday

“Welcome to Okinawa and OIST”

This orientation is a chance for new family and community members to get to know OIST and its community services. You’ll meet other families and pick up tips and stories from those who’ve been here a while

Title: Neutral-Atom Based Quantum Computing with 171Yb Nuclear-Spin Qubits

Speaker: Dr Sebastian Pucher, Quantum Engineer at Atom Computing, Boulder, Colorado, USA

The aim of the GWB (Global Women’s Breakfast) series is to celebrate the accomplishments of Women in Science and to inspire younger generations to pursue careers in science. Please register here by Friday, February 6th.

QG Seminar (Zoom) Speaker: Hassaan Saleem, (SUNY Albany) Title: Non-supersymmetric strings on AdS3

Title : "Introduction to Isogeny-based Cryptography"

Abstract : Isogeny-based cryptography is a fast-moving field, and recent developments have introduced several new techniques, making the barrier of entry particularly high for young researchers wishing to work in the field. To aid new researchers in the field is the aim of this "summer" school, which introduces all of the many essential tools that are used today. Among the topics to be covered are the correspondences between ideals and isogenies that give rise to both the Deuring correspondence, which is an essential part of protocols such as SQIsign, and the class group action on CM curves and oriented supersingular curves, which gives other cryptographic primitives such as CSIDH and SCALLOP. Further, higher dimensional abelian varieties and isogenies between these have recently become an integral part of isogeny-based cryptography, providing huge improvements to many existing protocols, as well as creating new protocols.

OIST startup EF Polymer invites everyone to join their annual carrot harvesting event!

Date: Saturday, February 7, 2026 Time: 10:00–12:00 Meeting: 9:50 at the Tancha-mae-no-hama Monument

TSVP Talk Language: English (no interpretation). Target audience: General audience / everyone at OIST and beyond. Freely accessible to all OIST members and guests without registration (also via Zoom).

Abstract: I will describe the resolution of two conjectures related to Dirichlet forms. In both cases a conceptually simple solution arises by stepping away from the p=2 regime. This leads to a new definition of a p-Dirichlet space, which unifies three quite different areas: Dirichlet form theory, Analysis on fractals and Analysis on metric spaces. The talk includes joint work with Mathav Murugan