Hokkaido University (HU) and the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMA) are pleased to announce the results of the HU-UMA Joint Research Seed Fund 2026.

This year, priority was given to research proposals in the fields of Advanced Agriculture; Blue/Green Economy, Sustainability and Planetary Boundaries; Future of Food, Polymer Science and Engineering; and Advanced Manufacturing. A total of eleven applications were submitted, with half led by early‑career researchers, indicating strong potential for sustainable collaborations in the years to come.

HU selected:

• Professor Hiroyuki Akinaga (Faculty of Information Science and Technology – FIST) for a proposal with Dev & Linda Gupta Professor Qiangfei Xia (Ricco College of Engineering) on UMA-HU Joint Workshop on Emerging AI Hardware.
• Associate Professor Ling Xiao (FIST) for a proposal with Assistant Professor Donghyun Kim (Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences) on the Development of Intelligent Agricultural Robots.*
• Assistant Professor Milena Lama (Faculty of Advanced Life Science – FALS) for a proposal with Assistant Professor Melody Morris (Department of Polymer Science and Engineering – PSE) on Elucidation of Polyurethane Degradation via High-throughput Experimentation and X-ray Scattering.
• Associate Professor Takayuki Nonoyama (FALS) for a proposal with Associate Professor Reika Katsumata (PSE) on Lignin-derived Carbon Materials for Sustainable Energy Storage.*

*Also budgeted by UMA

Additionally, UMA chose:

• Associate Professor Matthew Moore (Department of Food Science) for a proposal with Professor Tomoyasu Aizawa (FALS, HU) on Understanding the influence of viral capsid structure and dynamics on inactivation and persistence.

(Text provided by the Office for International Collaborations)