8th HOPE Meeting Overview

Date: Monday 7 – Friday 11, March 2016
Main Venue: Tsukuba International Congress Center (Tsukuba-city, Japan)
Subject Fields: Physics, Chemistry, Physiology/Medicine and Related Fields
Organizer: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)

8th HOPE Meeting was attended by 107 doctoral students and young researchers from 18* Asia-Pacific and African countries and regions.

*Participants’ countries/areas
Japan, Australia, Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Israel, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam and Myanmar

Seven distinguished researchers, including Nobel laureates, gave lectures in the HOPE Meeting.

Also, in group discussions, each participant attended a small discussion group of about 30 and conversed with eminent lectures about their research activities, future research career paths and other topics of interest to them.
Additionally, each participant was provided an opportunity to give a talk about his/her own research at a one-minute “flash talk” and poster presentations. They shared their current research works with others. The participants engaged in active discussions at poster presentations.

On the last day of the meeting, teams comprising multinational members delivered free theme presentations. At the closing ceremony, there were awards for the Best team presentation and Unique presentation. Furthermore, five participants were given the “Best Poster Award”. Among them, one was given the highest “HOPE Award” for her poster presentations.
In addition, the participants deepen the understanding of Japanese tradition and refined their perspectives of culture by trying their hand at Tea ceremony, Flower arrangement, Japanese wrapping, and Japanese calligraphy, enjoying the Japanese traditional Kabuki performance and workshop. Furthermore, the participants took trip to Tokyo to visit cultural sites, and to Tsukuba-city to visit research facilities.

A HOPE Dialogue was held on 8 March to carry out an English dialogue between HOPE Meeting lecturers and Japanese high school students. It was led by Profs. Ada E. Yonath and Barry J. Marshall and attended by 44 students from Sapporo Nihon University Senior High School, Ibaraki Prefectural Takezono High School, Chiba Prefectural Chosei Senior High School, Toshimagaoka Joshi Gakuen High School, Yamanashi Prefectural Kofu First High School, and Shizuoka Prefectural Nirayama High School which have experiences to participate in the JSPS Science Dialogue.

The students were divided into two groups to engage in discussions with each lecturer. They asked many questions to their lecturers such as their research activities, life experience from their childhood, or the motive to become a researcher. The lecturers offered warm and earnest responses to each question. Afterwards, the participant students commented: “It was valuable to listen to the Nobel laureate’s talk within a close distance; I felt that the lecturers lent their ears to every question; I was stimulated by the students from other high schools.”