Panel Discussion: "Common Mistakes When Applying for Independent Funding" ( 科研費応募の際によくあるミスについて)

Tadashi Sugihara, Ph.D. is the Manager of Grants and Research Collaborations Section in Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST). He is a neuroscientist and has worked in the Zanvyl Krieger Mind/Brain Institute at the Johns Hopkins University, the Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy at the University of Rochester, and the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in collaboration with Toyota Motor Corporation. He was also the Deputy Director of the Kyoto University Research Administration Office (KURA), Kyoto, Japan.

Dr. Yu Sasaki is currently a University Research Administrator at Kyoto University. Her current assignments at the Kyoto University Research Administration Office (KURA) include working with international faculty members on campus to facilitate their access to research grants as well as supporting departments and faculty members to increase the research capacity of the Humanities and Social Sciences. She completed her M.Sc. in Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London and was awarded her PhD degree from Kobe University in political science.

Jason first came to Japan as an exchange student in 2001. After bouncing back and forth between Japan and the US for a few years, he applied for and was awarded a Monbukagakusho Scholarship to begin graduate studies in 2009. After banging his head on a computer for a number of years, he found his PhD hiding in a dark room at Kumamoto University  (2014, CS & EE, Computational Biomechanics focus). You can still find him banging his head on a much smaller computer at KU, but someone has recklessly upgraded him to a URA position. He spends 1/3 of his working time as an international science communicator and another third of the time helping KU researchers apply for English-language funding opportunities in domestic and foreign arenas alike. He is acutely aware that there is a missing third here but assures everyone that it is spent doing extremely important work like updating the international grant website/calendar, writing scripts to “automate the boring stuff”, and helping to assess university research power using sophisticated statistical techniques.