FY2022 STAR grant recipients selected

With the rapid development of biotechnology in recent years, it has become easier to modify the functions of biopolymers such as proteins and peptides, and biopolymers are starting to be used as material components. However, in most cases, natural biopolymers do not have features suitable for material use, and it has been difficult to prepare biopolymers suitably modified to show material function-oriented features. This is partly because the functional properties of biopolymers have been optimized for use in living organisms during the evolution process. We have studied the development of biopolymers with suitable modifications and/or control of biological functions such as molecular recognition and self-assembling capabilities based on polymer science and physical chemistry, in addition to bioengineering. Recently, to further development of biopolymers with desired functions and/or physical properties, we have been generating function-oriented biopolymers based on machine learning predictions using the functional property data of genetically engineered biopolymers. The high potential of biopolymers has already been proven, and by establishing a strategy to develop biopolymers with excellent material functions as re-evolved based on oriented functions, we hope to develop material chemistry that can contribute to various fields, including the environment, medicine, and energy.

Born at the end of the 19th century, cinema created a completely different kind of celebrity and, as a mass medium, had a profound impact on popular culture. Subsequently, in Japan, television culture gave birth to idols, and as the internet spread throughout society, new platforms emerged, giving birth to YouTubers and Virtual YouTubers. My research mainly explores how celebrities are represented and valued in visual culture from the 20th to the 21st century from the perspectives of both media and gender theory. By historically analyzing the desires celebrities have elicited from the public, I hope to elucidate the government ideologies and gender norms in each period. I would also like to reconstruct the history of Japanese film, not as a history of filmmakers and their movies, but by depicting a history of visual culture, including stars, audiences, and technologies, from multiple perspectives, and by introducing a quantitative approach based on cinemetrics. In parallel to this research, through fieldwork, I will analyze communication between playground equipment and children in parks from the perspective of sociology and media theory, aiming to clarify the spaces and environments in which altruism is generated.

I am engaged in research and practice to realistically create schools that provide better education. This can be described as "action research" on "school reform" for "progressive education". Let me explain these three technical terms.
"Progressive education" is an attempt to make schooling centered on the experiences of children and students, whereas schooling in general, since the establishment of the modern education system, has been built around teachers, textbooks, and curriculum. "Progressive education" is a concept that many educators have been striving for worldwide, and has been pursued in practice in different times and places. At the same time, this goes to show that the realization of "progressive education" is fatalistically accompanied by great difficulties. It is thanks to the efforts of our predecessors that "progressive education" exists in today's society.
Educational research findings indicate that "progressive education" cannot be created in schools through the efforts of individual teachers, but requires teachers to work together as a community of educational professionals. Therefore, it is important to understand that the realization of "progressive education" requires the reform of schools, places embedded in institutional, policy, and organizational context.
I am pursuing "action research", which involves practitioners and researchers working together to reform reality. The key to "action research" is that it recognizes, better than anyone else, that such efforts are not easy to accomplish. "Action research" is characterized by its pursuit of real-world reform, while simultaneously theoretically pursuing reforms.
I am therefore engaged in "action research" that envisions the provision of better education in the tradition of "progressive education", pursues such progressive education by reforming schools, a complex place where policy and practice intersect, and creates progressive education through concrete "school reform" in collaboration with teachers faced with reality.