Stay Home, Stay Geek - DLab interviews housebound researchers during COVID-19

The novel coronavirus outbreak continues to restrict the activities of roughly 1,000 researchers at the Institute, and Tokyo Tech is seeking new, innovative ways to stay connected during this challenging time.

On May 11, Tokyo Tech’s Laboratory for Design of Social Innovation in Global Networks (DLab) launched a new online interview series to share the current thoughts of certain faculty members. Stay Home, Stay Geek ? DLab connects during COVID-19 aims to keep colleagues, students, and members of the public up to date regarding Tokyo Tech activities through interviews with some of its leading researchers.

The interviews, each approximately 15 minutes long, target academics from various fields. These include current faculty members and other researchers such as Tokyo Tech alumnus and co-recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Hideki Shirakawa. After each session, the interviewee nominates the next colleague to be interviewed. So far, the series includes talks with the following researchers, and more will be published soon after they are conducted.

Video	Key phrases	Interviewee	Language	Interviewer
1	Increasing importance of communication infrastructure	Kenichi Okada Professor, School of Engineering	Japanese	Asa Ito Associate Professor, Institute for Liberal Arts (ILA), Director, Future of Humanity Research Center
2	The manifestation of a global risk	Shinjiro Kanae Professor, School of Environment and Society	Japanese	Tamio Nakano Professor, Tokyo Tech Academy for Leadership (ToTAL), ILA
3	Drug discovery ? a long-term battle with complex life	Yuki Yamaguchi Professor, School of Life Science and Technology	Japanese	Asa Ito
4	Computing in search of promising compounds	Takashi Ishida Associate Professor, School of Computing	Japanese	Asa Ito
5	Special edition	Hideki Shirakawa Nobel laureate, Tokyo Tech alum	Japanese	Naoto Ohtake Professor, Institute of Innovative Research (IIR)
6	Understanding the meaning of data and beyond	Hiroyuki Ito Associate Professor, IIR	Japanese	Asa Ito
7	Interesting boundaries in both society and academics	Nobuhiro Chijiwa Associate Professor, School of Environment and Society	Japanese	Tamio Nakano
8	Online lectures as media experiments	Hiroichi Yanase Professor, ILA	Japanese	Asa Ito
9	Buildings that connect flexibly with the surroundings and where we connect through our five senses	Ryo Murata Associate Professor, School of Environment and Society	Japanese	Tamio Nakano
10	Devoting oneself to the one-ten-millionth-meter world	Ken Ohmori Associate Professor, School of Science	Japanese	Tamio Nakano
11	Search inside us ? there is another world	Ludovico Minati Visiting Associate Professor, IIR	English	Asa Ito
12	Measuring invisible things with a nano-container	Takehiko Tsukahara Associate Professor, IIR	Japanese	Tamio Nakano
13	Manipulating moving proteins	Takafumi Ueno Professor, School of Life Science and Technology	Japanese	Tamio Nakano
14	The virus in you, me, all of us	Noriyuki Ueda Professor, ILA	Japanese	Asa Ito
15	Coexistence over confrontation ? Embracing change in behavior	Shintaro Sengoku Associate Professor, School of Environment and Society	Japanese	Asa Ito
16	Was life born in deep-sea hydrothermal vents?	Ryuhei Nakamura Professor, Earth-Life Science Institute	Japanese	Tamio Nakano
17	The foundations of learning for teachers and the physicality of learning	Yuta Suzuki Associate Professor, ILA	Japanese	Asa Ito
18	Future of husbandry and sensing	Korkut Kaan Tokgoz Assistant Professor, Research Institute for the Earth Inclusive Sensing	English	Asa Ito

Tokyo Tech’s DLab was established in September 2018 to unite Tokyo Tech faculty, staff, students, and alumni with members of the public to design a better future together. In the past year and a half, DLab has hosted a variety of workshops which resulted in the launch of a future image of society and the Tokyo Tech Future Chronology in January 2020.

By uniting people through its latest initiative, DLab hopes that Tokyo Tech researchers, students, alumni, and friends can turn the challenges posed by COVID-19 into new opportunities and ideas for creating a better tomorrow.

• DLab shares vision, Tokyo Tech Future Chronology at event in central Tokyo | Tokyo Tech News
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Designing our future together
By gauging the needs and desires of society through dialogue, and by designing our future together, DLab aims to create a brighter, more prosperous world.

Laboratory for Design of Social Innovation in Global Networks (DLab)