A new initiative by Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) launched in the 2007 fiscal year to provide funding support for establishing education and research centers that perform at the apex of global excellence to elevate the international competitiveness of the Japanese universities.
The program will strengthen and enhance the education and research functions of graduate schools, to foster highly creative young researchers who will go on to become world leaders in their respective fields through experiencing and practicing research of the highest world standard.
Kumamoto University proposed a five-year program entitled "Cell Fate Regulation Research and Education Unit" and this has been selected as one of the 13 programs all over Japan in the field of life sciences. Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) has started its five-year support for our program with the annu al budged of approximately Y200 million.
Our program is aimed to promote research on cell fate regulation, which is a fundamental process governing organogenesis.
This program is aimed at the same time, and more importantly, to encourage young scientists in a wide variety of research fields related to cell fate regulation by providing interactive and interdisciplinary research environment in our unique system, the COE Liaison Laboratory established by 21st Century COE program.
The COE Liaison Laboratory provides space for experiments, occasion for scientific meetings, chance for obtaining research money, which will help the young scientists to become creative.
