Call for "Travel Notes"

As you may have noticed, recently we have started a new column "Travel Note." Vol.16 and Vol.17 exhibited two travel notes that reported research gatherings taken place in Kolkata and Bangkok, respectively. We the researchers have plenty of occasions to travel abroad and attend interesting conferences. It would greatly help establishing mutual understanding if we could share those experiences with each other. So if you had a chance of attending big conferences or visiting exotic places, please drop us a line.

Upcoming Events

iTHES Seminar
March 5 (Wed.), 2014, 15:00- (planned)
Main building room 433 (planned)
Igor Shovkovy　(Arizona State University)
"Magnetic Dance in a Quantum World"

iTHES-RIBF Joint Workshop
March 5, 2014, Faculty of Science, Kyushu University
Interdisciplinary workshop "Quarks, nuclei, and neutron stars"

iTHES-YITP Joint Workshop
March 10 - 23, 2014, Yukawa Institute, Kyoto University
"International Molecule-type Workshop on New correlations in exotic nuclei and advances of theoretical models"
http://www.yukawa.kyoto-u.ac.jp/contents/seminar/detail.php?SNUM=51665

Event Report

iTHES visitor from Chalmers Univ. of Technology, Sweden, Prof. Lembit Sihver gave a splended talk entitled "Charged Particle Transport Simulations for Radiotherapy and Space Dosimetry" at iTHES-RIBF Joint Seminar on February 6th. The subject of the talk was radiobiology. The importance of high-level simulation was stressed, illustrated by locking on the tumor regardless of the breathing movement during heavy ion therapy, and radiation dosage during space travel. The presentation was filled with breath-taking pictures, animations, wits and jokes (some of which referred to "The Simpsons," naturally), which fascinated the audience.
Prof. Sihver stays with us until March 20th at room 302 of RIBF building.

Person of the Week

Yuji Sugita
Self-introduction

I am Yuji Sugita, a member of Interdisciplinary Theoretical Biology Team. I received my Ph. D. in chemistry from Kyoto University in 1998. My supervisor in graduate school of Kyoto University was Prof. Nobuhiro Go. After a half year postdoc in RIKEN, I moved to Prof. Yuko Okamoto’s laboratory at Institute for Molecular Science as a research associate (Joshu). With Prof. Okamoto, I developed replica-exchange molecular dynamics (REMD) method for protein folding and dynamics. In 2002, I moved again to Prof. Chikashi Toyoshima’s laboratory at Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, the University of Tokyo as a lecturer. At the laboratory, I started atomistic MD simulations of Ca²⁺ pump in the lipid bilayer and investigated proton counter transport by Ca²⁺ pump. In 2007, I joined RIKEN as an associate chief scientist and started Theoretical Biochemistry Laboratory, focusing on theoretical/computational analysis of biochemical phenomena, like protein folding, association, membrane protein functions, etc. In 2012, I promoted to a chief scientist and changed the laboratory name to Theoretical Molecular Science Laboratory. Now, we are investigating not only biological phenomena but also a variety of chemical processes by MD simulation and ab initio quantum chemistry. From 2010, I have worked as a team leader for RIKEN QBiC and AICS, too. One of our major research goals is to achieve a whole cell modeling by computational chemistry. For this goal, we need to connect molecular-level understandings with cellular-level ones and develop new theoretical and computational tools and software. Through the iTHES project, I would like to discuss with researchers who are working in different fields, hoping to exchange new ideas or methods between physics, chemistry, and biological sciences.

Visitors

Prof. Lembit Sihver
(Chalmers University of Technology, SWEDEN)
Nuclear Science and Engineering
Jan.20th - March 20th, 2014
room 302 (3rd floor, RIBF building)

Prof. Igor Shovkovy
(Arizona State University)
physics of graphene, quantum field theory,
dense matter in nuclear/particle physics.
http://shovkovy.faculty.asu.edu/
March 2 - March 15, 2014
room 433 (4th floor, main research building)

Prof. Gordon Baym
(Univ. Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
cold atom physics, condensed matter physics,
dense matter and neutron stars
http://physics.illinois.edu/people/profile.asp?gbaym
March 18 - April 10, 2014
room 433 (4th floor, main research building)