Current Position: Researcher, Department of Cellular and Developmental Biology of Plants, University of Bielefeld, Germany
Education: PhD: Laboratory of Molecular Physiology, Department of Biological Sciences, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo, Japan
Non-scientific Interests: playing the piano
When I was in high school I was enchanted by Volvox swimming like a mirror ball. Since then I have been working with Volvox. I did my graduation thesis on phototaxis in Volvox. The more I worked with Volvox and their relatives, the more interesting they became. I obtained my Ph. D. degree through the analysis of a phototaxis mutant of Chlamydomonas, a unicellular relative of Volvox. I was convinced of the importance of mutant analysis of these organisms. Then I joined the Nishii Initiative Research Unit in RIKEN as a postdoctoral researcher, I have isolated and characterized inversionless mutants using a novel Volvox transposon Idaten, which I reported upon recently.