Assoc. Prof. NISHIDA Kozue received the 23rd Tokyo Tech Challenging Research Awards.

In recent years, environmental issues such as global warming, ocean acidification and environmental pollution have been progressing rapidly due to human-induced environmental changes. In order to realize sustainable use of natural resources and environmental conservation under such circumstances, it is important to assess the environmental impact on living organisms by seamlessly understanding environmental changes from the past to the present through the observation and accumulation of environmental information. Since the hard tissues of organisms such as shells and coral skeletons grow day by day, it is possible to obtain time-series information on the living environment (water temperature, salinity, etc.) of organisms by using the stable isotope ratios of their hard tissues. In this research project, we aim to decipher the history of the living environments of various organisms by introducing a clumped isotope analysis system that can perform high-precision temperature reconstruction. This technology will make it possible to accurately reconstruct the temperature history of various biological and rock samples, and is expected to contribute to the advancement of various transdisciplinary research.