“Balancing Architectural Works and Social Contributions”

Speaker:	Shigeru Ban	(SHIGERU BAN ARCHITECTS)

Born in Tokyo in 1957. Graduated from the Cooper Union. Started working for Arata Isozaki & Associates in 1982. Founded Shigeru Ban Architects in 1985.

Became consultant to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 1995.
Established the NGO, Voluntary Architects' Network (VAN) in the same year to support disaster relief. Selected works include Centre Pompidou- Metz, Oita Prefecture Art Museum, Mt. Fuji World Heritage Centre, Shizuoka, Musical Complex of La Seine Musicale, and Swatch Omega Headquarters. Recipient of multiple awards, including Grande Médaille d’or de l’Académie d’architecture, France (2004), Grand Prize of AIJ (2009) , le grade d’officier for L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France (2010), Auguste Perret Prize (2011), Art Prize from the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs (2012), le grade de commandeur for L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France (2014), Pritzker Architecture Prize (2014), JIA Grand Prix (2015), Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon, Japan (2017) , Mother Teresa Social Justice Award (2017) and Princess of Asturias Award for Concord (2022). An ambassador among "distinguished thinkers and practitioners" for the New European Bauhaus high-level roundtable (2021). Currently Professor at Keio University.

“Looking Back on Half a Century of Research Thoughts on Basic Research”

Speaker:	Yoshinori Ohsumi	(Tokyo Institute of Technology, Cell Biology Center, Institute of Innovative Research Honorary Professor)

After graduating from the University of Tokyo's College of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Ohsumi entered graduate school and earned a PhD in molecular biology while studying E. coli. He then became a postdoctoral fellow at Rockefeller University in the US, where his research focused on yeast.

After returning to Japan, he became an assistant professor in the Faculty of Science at the University of Tokyo, where he analyzed the physiological functions of yeast vacuoles. Later, as an associate professor in the college of Liberal Arts at the same university, he began research on the degradative function of vacuoles and discovered that yeast induces autophagy during starvation. He isolated genes involved in this process and succeeded to identify many ATG genes.

Later, he was invited to be a professor at the National Institute for Basic Biology, Okazaki National Research Institutes. He enthusiastically analyzed the genes involved in autophagy and showed that the mechanism of autophagy is universal, i.e., it is found both in animals and plants.

The results of his research have been duly recognized both domestically and internationally, and he has received numerous awards including the Kyoto Prize, the Gairdner International Award, and the International Prize for Biology as well as the Order of Culture and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2016.