The University of Tsukuba Research Administration/Management Office supports researchers by connecting them with URAs at universities and research institutes across the country. Connections with overseas research institutions are also being established.
If we can be of any help to you in realizing your initial aspirations to become a researcher or in helping you achieve your goals, please do not hesitate to contact us. And please let us hear from you!

What kind of career have you passed through so far?

Experience in supporting researchers from a venturer's perspective

After graduating from the First Cluster of Colleges of University of Tsukuba, College of Natural Sciences, I went on to Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences at The University of Tokyo, and received my PhD (Science) from the Department of Genetics of The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI. My specialty is developmental biology.

After working as a postdoctoral researcher at the JST BIRD project, I realized that I was better suited to work as a connecter between researchers and research projects, so I switched careers and worked in management consulting, venture capital, and biotech ventures. During that time, I was involved in branding, marketing, publishing (including e-books), web system development, video production, planning and implementation of various events, and experienced everything from starting a business to closing it.

In the private sector, I felt a sense of fulfillment in being able to support a wide range of researchers regardless of their institutions, but I also felt a sense of desperation in not being able to get deeply involved with each individual. Then, when I heard that URA was going to be introduced in Japan, I thought I would like to be of some help to my alma mater, the University of Tsukuba, and took up my current position as URA.

What are important things/values/significance/ in your work?

Making connections with people, with great care

I value the motivations that researchers had when they wanted to become researchers, such as "what I want to achieve" and "what I want to accomplish.

I would like to provide support that will make people feel that they are one step closer to their goals by doing research at the University of Tsukuba.

I am also mindful that no problem can be solved in the same dimension in which it occurred.
For example, I have been involved in the launch and renovation of the research funding information site "RISS," the University of Tsukuba's research information portal site "COTRE," and the electronic submission system "u-Rad". Through these tasks, I have been able to ask questions and receive cooperation from various staff and faculty members in the university, which has been very helpful.

When I look back on my work, I try to think about whether I was able to "make the difficult things easy, the easy things deep, the deep things interesting, the interesting things serious, the serious things amusing, and the amusing things amusing."

What are your future goals and prospects?

Increasing the level of research time and basic research funds

Since the incorporation of national universities, it has been pointed out that the personnel costs of full-time faculty members who support education and research activities, especially the full-time employment of young researchers, have been decreasing, as well as their research hours.
Our immediate goal is to return the level of research time and basic research funding to the level before the incorporation.
Toward this goal, I have been in charge of more than 70 cases of pre-award support for research grant applications on a researcher-by-researcher basis, including KAKENHI, CREST, PRESTO, SOKUDO, RISTEX, AMED-CREST, PRIME, and A-STEP.

In the process, I felt the need for a method to reorganize the research strengths that only the research proposal proposer can provide, the resources such as assets, know-how, and human networks embedded in the research concept and plan, and the inventions embedded in the research results from the perspective of scarcity, difficulty of imitation, and barriers to entry. As a solution, I devised and developed the "Research Canvas" framework template.
Thirteen types of "Research Canvas" are widely available both inside and outside the university, so please feel free to use them if you are interested.

research Canvas [PDF]

As for the development of systems to be used by URA and others, I mainly work on the determination of requirement specifications, requirement definition, basic design, and internal coordination.

So far, I have been involved in the launch and renovation of the research funding information site "RISS", the research funding information mailing list, research promotion support tools, the University of Tsukuba research information portal site "COTRE", and the electronic submission system "u-Rad".

I have also been involved in planning and organizing workshops that incorporate design ideas, such as the "Researcher Blind Date Project-Meet your potential collaborator!", which I would like to continue to develop in the future.