Research Workshops Fund extended and Joint PhD established by Hokkaido and Melbourne

Participants of the Morning Tea Ceremony

On 19 and 20 September 2024, Professor Mark Cassidy Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research of the University of Melbourne (UoM), a strategic international research partner of Hokkaido University (HU) visited Sapporo once again.  DVCR Cassidy’s previous visit was in 2022 when he was the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology and accompanied Vice-Chancellor Duncan Maskell.  His delegation this time comprised 11 people including Professor Jenny Wilkinson-Berka, Head of the School of Biomedical Sciences, Professor Peter Choong, Associate Dean Innovation and Enterprise, and Professor Bruce Thompson, Head of the Melbourne School of Health Sciences from the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry, and Health Sciences; Professor Ben Rubinstein, Deputy Dean Research (Interim) and Professor Majid Sarvi from the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology; Professor Andy Martin, Associate Dean Research and Dr. James Hutchison, Senior Lecturer from the Faculty of Science; Dr. Andrew Woolnough, Associate Director, Enterprise and Partnerships; Ms. Maria Roitman and Ms. Weilun Nien from the Chancellery, Research and Enterprise.

The UoM leaderships started visiting HU in 2022 as the aforementioned VC’s visit, which was followed by HU President’s visit to UoM, and continued their annual delegation to HU by DVCs Global, Culture and Engagement, and Indigenous in 2023 summer, DVC Indigenous in 2024 summer.  This senior leaderships’ visiting each other time by time certainly have strengthened a lasting bond of trust between the two universities.  This time, the delegation and HU counterparts gathered in Sapporo to extend the Hokkaido-Melbourne Joint Research Workshops Fund for another two years, which has been the strategic partnership’s flagship initiative and budgeted fifteen workshops of the two universities since FY 2022-23, and celebrate the establishment of a joint PhD program between the Course of Bioengineering and Bioinformatics in the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, HU and the School of Chemistry in the Faculty of Science, UoM, which will accept two students on 1 October 2024.

Presentations inside the Center for Education and Research for Hokkaido Wines. Clockwise from top left: An introduction / Prof. Ohashi / Prof. Iwashita / Dr.Hutchinson / Prof. Gotoh / Prof. Sawamura

Using the Center for Education and Research for Hokkaido Wines as the venue, the morning tea ceremony was started with a short introduction on overview of the inter-university partnership and the Joint Research Workshops Fund by Taena Uemura, a HU contact point for HU-UoM collaborations.  Four past awardees delivered short presentations on their Workshops collaborations and the following joint research and education expansion: Professor Toshiro Ohashi from the Faculty of Engineering on Mechano-pharmacology; Professor Daisuke Sawamura from the Faculty of Health Sciences on interprofessional allied health care for older adults; Professor Akihiro Iwashita from the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center on Slavic-Eurasian materials sharing in the changing environments; Professor Takafumi Gotoh from the Field Science Center for Northern Biosphere on sustainable livestock production.  From UoM, Dr. Hutchison from the Faculty of Science talked about ongoing research collaborations with Professor Hiroshi Uji-i from the Research Institute for Electronic Science, HU, and how their strong tie in academic collaborations reached to establish the UoM’s very first joint PhD with a Japanese university. 

In front of the ceremony participants including President Kiyohiro Houkin and academic and professional staff concerned, Professor Tsuyoshi Setoguchi, Executive Vice President (Research), HU and Professor Cassidy, DVCR renewed the Joint Research Workshops Fund Agreement. Professor Aya Takahashi, Executive Vice President (International Affairs), HU signed on the Joint PhD Programme Head Agreement.  The latter allows the two universities to plan any PhD courses of graduate schools.  The ceremony was cheerfully closed with a tasting session of HU and UoM wines.

The signing of the Joint PhD Programme Head Agreement with supervisors

 

The renewal of the Joint Research Workshops Fund Agreement, extending the fund for another two years

 

President Houkin spoke to the participants.

Tasting of HU and UoM wines

Not only to look back on the past three year’s activities, but the delegates also paid site visits to seek for further collaboration seeds afterwards: Smart Agriculture Education and Research Centre, International Institute for Zoonosis Control (IIZC), Faculty of Engineering, Centre for Advanced Research of Energy and Materials (CAREM), Faculty of Information Science and Technology, Faculty of Medicine and Proton Beam Therapy Centre.

A welcome dinner and visits to some of HU’s facilities. Clockwise from the top left: Welcome dinner / Faculty of Information Science and Technology / IIZC / Lab. of Applied Neutron Beam Science and Engineering / Dept. of Respiratory Medicine / Smart Agriculture Education and Research Center