Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology

Established	1 September 2005
President	Jonathan Dorfan
Faculty	46
Staff	~200
Budget	US$ 154 million
Location	1919-1 Tancha, Onna-Son, Okinawa 904-0412, Japan
Website	www.oist.jp

The Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) is an interdisciplinary graduate school offering a 5-year PhD program in Science. Over half of the faculty and students are recruited from outside Japan, and all education and research is conducted entirely in English.

OIST researchers are conducting multi-disciplinary research in neuroscience, mathematical and computational sciences, physics, chemistry, integrative biology and molecular, cell, and developmental biology.

In the six years leading up to graduate school accreditation, OIST received recognition for doing original research and sponsoring innovative international workshops and courses. OIST’s objectives are to conduct internationally distinguished education and research in science and technology in Okinawa, to contribute to the promotion and self-sustaining development of Okinawa and to contribute to the development of science and technology worldwide.

History

In 2001, Koji Omi, the the Minister of Okinawa and Northern Territories Affairs, and Science and Technology Policy, announced the plan to establish an international graduate university in Okinawa. In May 2002, former minister Junichiro Koizumi pledged that the Japanese government will promote the project to establish the new graduate university in Okinawa at the 30th anniversary ceremony marking the reversion of Okinawa to Japan. Two years later, it was decided that the university will be located in Onna and four research proposals were selected in order to form the Initial Research Project (IRP), which started in Uruma in 2004.

The Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Promotion Corporation (OIST P.C.) was established on September 1, 2005, after the Diet of Japan approved the OIST P.C. Act (Act No. 26 of 2005) in March 2005. The promotion corporation was established in order to prepare the way for an international graduate university dedicated to science and technology. Nobel laureate Sydney Brenner was appointed first president of OIST P.C. in August of the same year. OIST P.C. became an independent administrative institution.

In March 2007, site preparation for constructing the new OIST campus in Onna Village commenced and one year later, construction work for the center building and the first laboratory building started. The interior fittings of the buildings were completed in March 2010 and most of the research groups moved from the temporary sites in Uruma to the Onna campus.

Following the successful establishment and operation of OIST P.C., the Diet of Japan passed the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology School Corporation Act(Act No. 76of 2009) mid-year 2009, thereby providing the institutional basis for the University and establishing a framework for transitioning from a research institute to a fully functioning graduate university. The OIST S.C. act was enacted on 10 July 2009. From the perspective of respecting the autonomy and the management flexibility of the school, the Act stipulates the establishment of the graduate university as an independent special school corporation. Based on the Act, the graduate university submitted an application to the minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in March 2011. The university received accreditation on 1 November 2011 and will be welcoming its new students on the fall of 2012

School Corporation & University Management Structure

In keeping with the mandate of the OIST School Corporation Act, the OIST School Corporation (OIST S.C.) and the Graduate University present a unified management structure. The ultimate authority and responsibility for the management and operation of the OIST S.C. is vested in its Board of Governors (BOG). The BOG consists of world-renowned scientists who monitor all actions conducted by OIST S.C. and the implementation of strategies. It includes:

• Jerome Friedman, Nobel laureate
• Timothy Hunt, Nobel laureate
• Yuan-Tseh Lee, Nobel laureate
• Susumu Tonegawa, Nobel laureate
• Torsten Wiesel, Nobel laureate
• Lord Martin Rees, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge
• Akito Arima, Japan Science Foundation Chairman
• Ichiro Kanazawa, Former president of the Science Council of Japan
• Kiyoshi Kurokawa, Former special cabinet advisor in charge of Science, Technology and Innovation
• Hiroko Sho, Director of the Okinawa Learning Center
• Jonathan Dorfan, President-Elect of OIST and Previous Director of Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
• Robert Baughman, CEO of OIST and Past associate director for Technology Development at NINDS
• Rita Colwell, Past president of the American Institute of Biological Sciences
• Hiroshi Komiyama, Mitsubishi Research Institute chairman
• Cherry Murray, Dean of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
• K. VijayRaghavan, advisory committee member of Janelia Farm Research Campus
• Takeshi Yasumoto, Senior research manager of the Academic-Industry Collaboration for Okinawa Coastal Lines, MEXT

The BOG is in charge of selecting a Chief Operating Officer (CEO) for OIST S.C., and the CEO also serves as the President of the University. The BOG entrusts the day-to-day management of the University to the President. Additionally, the BOG appoints the Provost, who is also the Vice-CEO. Vice Presidents of the University are nominated by the President and approved by the BOG. The President, in consultation with the BOG, establishes a management structure for the University, a structure which is to be an efficient and effective vehicle for operating a distinguished international graduate university and which will ensure transparency and accountability in its administrative and fiscal operations. The institute is thus led by an Executive Office, which consists of the President, Vice President and Executive Director, and Chief Administrative Officer. Jonathan Dorfan was named president-elect of the graduate university.

Funding

OIST relies on public subsidies paid by the Japanese government. The government subsidy for OIST comes in two areas: a subsidy for operations and a subsidy for facilities. Since its launch in September 2005, the budget of OIST has steadily increased, and with continued funding, the center building, Laboratory 1, Laboratory 2 will be completed to accommodate the target of about 50 PIs at the time of the opening of the graduate university in FY2012. The annual budget for fiscal year 2011 showed direct public subsidies to the amount of approximately 11.9 billion yen (US$ 154 million), and additional acquisition of external funding such as donations, competitive research grants, and sponsored research.

Researchers and Research Units

As of October 1, 2011, OIST had over 200 researchers (approximately 80 non-Japanese from 30 countries) and about 100 administrative staff. The research staff includes marine biologist, physicists, neuroscientists, geneticists, ecologists, nanotechnologists and mathematicians just to mention a few. OIST has over 355 research publications (FY2010), more than 28 joint research projects worldwide (FY2010) and ten patents applications (4 accepted).

Some of the world renowned scientists at OIST include; Sydney Brenner, Nobel laureate (for work with Caenorhabditis elegans) and heads the unit of molecular genetics, Noriyuki Satoh, renowned developmental biologist, who was professor at Kyoto University and now heads the Unit for Developmental, Evolutionary, and Environmental Genomics of Marine Invertebrates, Mitsuhiro Yanagida, world-renowned cell biologist, who had been working as a professor at Kyoto University on the eukaryotic cell cycle and now heads the Unit on Cellular Strategy for Starved G0 Arrest and Vegetative Proliferation and Tsumoru Shintake, Free Electron Laser award winner for his major role in the construction of the Riken SACLA facility and now heads the Quantum Wave Microscopy Unit.

Research Units OIST’s research programs are interdisciplinary and aim to be at the leading edge of research in science and technology in particular in the life sciences, the physical sciences and mathematics. The five main research areas covered at OIST are, Neuroscience, Molecular, cell and developmental biology, Integrative biology, Mathematical and computational science, and Physics and Chemistry. These five research areas together constitute a total of 45 research units head by research experts in these fields. They are listed below.

Arbuthnott, Gordon	Brain Mechanisms for Behavior
Bandi, Mahesh	Collective Interactions
Brenner, Sydney	Molecular Genetics
Busch, Thomas	Quantum Systems
Chakraborty, Pinaki	Fluid Mechanics
Dani, Keshav	Femtosecond Spectroscopy
De Schutter, Erik	Computational Neuroscience
Doya, Kenji	Neural Computation
Economo, P Evan	Biodiversity and Biocomplexity
Goryanin, Igor	Biological Systems
Hikami, Shinobu	Mathematical and Theoretical Physics
Isoda, Masaki	Unit on Neural Systems and Behavior
Jenke-Kodama, Holger	Microbiology and Biochemistry of Secondary Metabolites
Kitano, Hiroaki	Open Biology
Konstantinov, Denis	Quantum Dynamics
Kuhn, Bernd	Optical Neuroimaging
Luscombe, Nicholas	Genomics and Regulatory Systems
Marquez-Lago, Tatiana	Integrative Systems Biology
Maruyama, Ichiro	Information Processing Biology
Masai, Ichiro	Developmental Neurobiology
Mikheyev, Alexander	Ecology and Evolution
Miller, Jonathan	Physics and Biology
Mitarai, Satoshi	Marine Biophysics
Nic Chormaic, Síle	Light-Matter Interactions
Price, Mary Ann	Developmental Signaling
Qi, Yabing,	Energy Materials and Surface Sciences
Samatey, Fadel	Trans-Membrane Trafficking
Satoh, Noriyuki	Marine Genomics
Saze, Hidetoshi	Plant Epigenetics
Shannon, Nic	Theory of Quantum Matter
Shintake, Tsumoru	Quantum Wave Microscopy
Sinclair, Robert	Mathematical Biology
Skoglund, Ulf	Structural Cellular Biology
Sowman, Mukhles Ibrahim	Nanoparticles by Design for Nanotechnology and Biomedical Applications
Takahashi, Tomoyuki	Cellular and Molecular Synaptic Function
Tanaka, Fujie	Chemistry and Chemical Bioengineering
Tonomura, Akira	Electron Microscopy
Tripp, Gail	Human Developmental Neurobiology
Van Vactor, David	Formation and Regulation of Neuronal Connectivity
Wickens, Jeff	Neurobiology Research
Wolf, Matthias	Molecular Cryo-Electron Microscopy
Yamamoto, Tadashi	Cell Signal
Yanagida, Mitsuhiro	G0 Cell
Yazaki-Sugiyama, Yoko	Neuronal Mechanism for Critical Period

Graduate University

In the fall of 2011 OIST will in principle gain full accreditation as a university, bringing to reality the 2001 plan of establishing an international education and research institution in Okinawa. OIST S.C. aims to host first class graduate students who will commence their doctoral studies in the fall of 2012. With a strong emphasis on curiosity driven research OIST promotes innovative science and technology in a highly facilitating and supportive environment.

The academic structure and the physical layout of the research environment have been designed to optimize cross-disciplinary interactions between the faculty, student and research staff. Every year, 20 students accepted for admission will benefit from OIST’s low student to instructor ratio and financial support for living costs, health care, and housing. This will enable them to focus on the science as they work side-by-side with world-class faculty in state-of-the-art facilities at the campus in Onna, Okinawa.

Campus

The new Onna campus was opened in March 2010 and is located on a hillside surrounded by subtropical forest. The whole campus area covers around 222 hectares with the main campus having approximately 80 hectares. The Onna campus consists of the Center Building and three laboratory wings, but currently, only the Center Building and one laboratory building are in operation. Construction of Laboratory 2 is ongoing and completion of this is expected in April 2012. Occupancy of the building, housing an additional 16 faculty members is expected in mid-2012.

The main features of the graduate university include: a single interdisciplinary graduate program, five-year integrated doctoral program, about 20 students per year with about 50 faculty members, education and research conducted in English and at least half of the students/faculty members to be non-Japanese.

The key concepts of the objectives embody:

• Best in the World: the graduate university is for top-class scientists who conduct “best in the world” research and education in science and technology.
• Flexible: in compliance with government regulations an unconventional administration structure and high-level of government funding support the graduate university is to become one of the best-in-the-world, and assure the autonomy and flexible management of the corporation.
• International: more than half of the faculty and students are non-Japanese, and English is the official language.
• Global Networking: develop partnership with leading universities and research institutions worldwide with OIST as a hub in the international network of scientists particularly in the Asia-Pacific region.
• Collaboration and Industry: establish attractive schemes for collaboration with the private sector. Form a scientific industrial cluster by attracting corporate laboratories and venture businesses.

References

Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology website

Nature, 29 June 2011. Okinawa goes recruiting by David Cyranoski

Nature, 30 June 2011. Made in Japan

OIST: The movie - youtube

External links

• OIST
• OIST promotion video on Youtube
• OIST Official Youtube Channel

26°27′43.01″N 127°49′51.8″E / 26.4619472°N 127.831056°E / 26.4619472; 127.831056