RIKEN has been holding Science Seminars in which
invited intellectuals participate to help bring Science closer to the general public.
Lively exchanges between Mr. Takeda (left) and Mr. Tani
The RIKEN Science Seminar is a novel talk-show-style event for those who are curious about Science but don’t know where to start. In FY 2008 RIKEN held a series of two talks at Sky Studio in Roppongi Academy Hills 49, in which young RIKEN researchers, each at the frontline in their chosen fields, talked to Souun Takeda, a young calligrapher known for his unique creative style.
In the first seminar held in January 2009, Jun Tani, a brain scientist and the team leader of the Laboratory for Behavior and Dynamic Cognition in the RIKEN Brain Science Institute, gave a talk about the mechanism in which, after making a robot learn many actions, consciousness is born out of unconsciousness, entitled “The source of creation ― the moment when consciousness is born”. In the second Seminar held in March, Hiroki Ueda, a life scientist and the team leader of the System Biology Study Team in the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology, talked about the body clock, which regulates the daily rhythm in the body, and the body calendar, which regulates the body according to the seasons, in a presentation entitled “The miracle that is you ― how organisms keep time”. The venue was filled with an audience of more than one hundred people who enjoyed the lively talk and performance by Mr. Takeda and the researchers.