OIST Innovation Newsletter #3

We are excited to announce that the OIST Technology Development and Innovation Center is now OIST Innovation. Over the next few months, we will be rolling out a bold new brand identity that better reflects our commitment to fostering innovation and driving technological advancements for social impact, both locally and globally. While our brand name has changed, rest assured that we will continue to provide the same exceptional services and support for technology commercialization and entrepreneurship that the OIST community and our strategic partners around the world have come to expect.

Our new brand is just one of many triumphs we have achieved over the last couple of months.

Spotlights illuminate the most innovative technologies, research, programs, and people that OIST has to offer the world.
Events are our can't-miss seminars, workshops, and meet-ups, both physical and virtual.
News collects stories from around the globe showcasing the achievements of OIST Innovators.

If you haven’t subscribed to our newsletter, please do so here. If you are already part of our community, I am sure you will find more in this newsletter about ways to collaborate and interact with OIST. I hope to meet you in Okinawa soon.

Sincerely,
Gil Granot-Mayer
Executive Vice President
OIST Innovation

A new research center has been established at OIST with funding from the Japan Science and Technology Agency. The Global Bioconvergence Center of Innovation aims to channel interdisciplinary synergies between life science, marine science, engineering, AI and complex systems, and the institutional synergies between academia, government, and industry to accelerate the development of practical solutions to social challenges.

The grant award, the largest in OIST history, enables the Center to launch 12 initial projects with more than 30 collaborating institutions all striving towards a "One World, One Health" society -- a concept recognizing the critical relationship between humanity and the natural world.

OIST Innovation will play a key role at the Center by creating new models for industry collaboration and new commercialization platforms to accelerate startups that disrupt markets through technological convergence.

Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is the most common form of focal epilepsy and affects more than 60 million people globally. It is a chronic disorder that causes repeated seizures and is difficult to treat pharmacologically. Currently available treatments only work for some patients and, even if implemented successfully, cause severe side effects or provide very short-term relief. A team of OIST researchers led by Professor Kazumasa Tanaka has developed a novel method of potentially preventing the development of TLE by artificially inducing hibernation. This technology marks a major step toward a pioneering therapeutic approach and is available for co-deveopment.

Qubits are fragile. Their states change very quickly in response to environmental factors such as temperature, introducing a lot of errors that impact the development of quantum computers. Researchers have struggled to develop an efficient way to correct these errors in real-time. In work published in Physical Review Research, researchers in the lab of Professor Jason Twamley and their collaborators at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, and the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia have developed a potentially powerful error correction scheme for quantum computers.

Two startups supported by the OIST Innovation Accelerator have been selected by The Bank of Okinawa to receive gants totaling 2-million-yen. The grant award ceremony was held at OIST on March 24, 2023.

Osaka Heat Cool (Japan): Develops medical devices that reduce the symptoms of skin diseases by leveraging the thermal grill illusion.
Tree Oceans (Colombia): Develops AR technology to help Parkinson's patients improve their ability to walk.

Congratulations to these amazing entrepreneurs as they embark on their startup journey! Contact us for an introduction to the startups.

We concluded partnership agreements with companies and universities with the aim of promoting innovation and entrepreneurship. Highlights of a few of our new partners:

Development Bank of Japan is supporting venture creation at OIST and made a strategic investment in the OIST-Lifetime Ventures Fund.
Inspire Corporation offers tailored mentoring support to selected agriculture, forestry, fisheries, stockraising, food & beverage and environment technology startups emerging from OIST research labs.
Kyushu University and OIST agree to partner on strengthening research, education, and innovation in the Kyushu-Okinawa Region.

Get in touch with us to explore collaboration opportunities.

Are you a domain expert in a deeptech industry sector?
Have you developed a product or startup from university technology?
Are you motivated by finding technological solutions to global problems?
Do you enjoy giving back to the community by advising young innovators?

You should consider becoming an OIST Innovation Mentor.

Through a curated matching process, you will have an opportunity to offer your expertise and support to research projects and startup teams at OIST. In return, you get to watch as groundbreaking science is conducted and new technologies emerge from the labs. Apply today to be an OIST Innovation Mentor.

Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry selects OIST Innovation to join its J-Innovation Hub.
OIST inventor Professor Yabing Qi made Clarivate's list of highly cited researchers for the second year in a row and is also elected 2023 Materials Research Society Fellow.
Watasumi collaborates with Okinawa IT company Okicom to develop wastewater treatment devices (Japanese), and CEO David Simpson's entrepreneurial journey is featured in Frontier Journey, the online magazine of real estate company, Sun Frontier (Japanese).
Hitotsubashi University Business School students participate in shaping the future of science and business as interns at OIST.