On April 12, (Friday), at Soka University’s Science and Engineering Building, the kick-off meeting of the Complex Carbohydrate Chain Research Center took place, attended by the university’s faculty, staff, and students.

The center brings together the faculty members of Soka University’s Department of Science and Engineering for Sustainable Innovation, specializing in glycomics and information studies. The center aims to contribute to the development of global carbohydrate chain research by creating new academic fields via introducing data science to carbohydrate chain research in order to elucidate the complex experimental data of carbohydrate chains that involve various phenomena of living organisms, such as nerves, infection, immunity, and reproduction.

At the kick-off meeting, after greetings from President Yoshihisa Baba and Vice President Koichi Kandachi (who is also the director of the Research Promotion Center at the university), Professor Shoko Nishihara, who is responsible for the Complex Carbohydrate Chain Research Center and who serves as the Dean of the Graduate School of Engineering, introduced her staff and shared her determination as follows: “By combining comprehensive data and the data science of experimental science, we will aim to further elucidate the function of carbohydrate chains and explore their application to the phenomena of living organisms and our understanding of such.”

This was followed by a lecture by Senior Researcher Akira Togayachi of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, titled “Medical and Industrial Application of Carbohydrate Chains (Sugar Chain Disease Biomarker Development),” and a lecture by Researcher Issaku Yamada of the Noguchi Institute (a public interest incorporated foundation), titled “Establishing Information Infrastructure for Carbohydrate Chain Science.”
On this day, the website for the Complex Carbohydrate Chain Research Center went live.
The following is the link: