Female researchers commended for their achievements with 2019 Sanae-I. Itoh Awards for Outstanding Kyushu University Female Researchers

Female researchers at Kyushu University were honored for their research achievements in areas ranging from biology, robotics, and astrophysics to language and law with Sanae-I. Itoh Awards for Outstanding Kyushu University Female Researchers at a ceremony held at Shiiki Hall on Saturday, October 19, during the Kyushu University Academic Festival 2019.

The awards were established in 2018 with the aim of nurturing research ambition among female researchers, cultivating outstanding female researchers who will engage in future academic research, and further improving university diversity by recognizing young female researchers and female graduate students who have made exceptional research achievements at the university.

Previously called the Young Female Researchers and Female Graduate School Students Awards, the awards were renamed last September to honor the achievements of Sanae-I. Itoh, who passed away this year. A former executive vice president and professor emeritus, Itoh was instrumental in establishing this award during her tenure at the Office for Promotion of Gender Equality and continued to make significant contributions to the fund thereafter.

This academic year, 13 candidates were nominated in the young female researcher category and 17 in the female graduate school student category. Following rigorous screening, six candidates were chosen for awards: one from each category for Top Excellence, and two from each category for Excellence.

At the ceremony, President Chiharu Kubo presented the three awardees in attendance  with certificates of merit and commemorative plaques.

The awards are funded through donations from the “Project for Promoting the Empowerment of Female Researchers,” and a complete list of this year’s awardees and their research achievements can be found below.

Young Female Researchers category
■Top Excellence
・Dr. Shizuka Miura
　Research Assistant Professor, Medical Institute of Bioregulation
　“Generation of mouse and human organoid-forming
  intestinal progenitor cells by direct lineage reprogramming”

■Excellence
・Dr. Rumi Takaki
　Assistant Professor, Faculty of Humanities
　“Study on a unified mechanism of elliptical phenomena based on the minimalist
　program”

・Dr. Yukiko Yamauchi
　Associate Professor, Faculty of Information Science and Electrical Engineering
　“A theory for distributed computation by mobile robots”

Female Graduate School Student category
■Top Excellence
・Ms. Yuko Matsushita
　Doctoral Program, Graduate School of Science
　“Understanding of the formation process from low-mass stars to high-mass stars”

■Excellence
・Ms. Maiko Okamoto
　Doctoral Program, Graduate School of Law
　“A theory of adaptations of labor contracts”

・Ms. Chiharu Ishii
　Doctoral program, Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences
　“Development of a two-dimensional HPLC-MS/MS system for the selective and
　simultaneous analysis of D-amino acids/D-form residues and applications to biological
　samples”