On Tuesday this week MOF  had a visit by Dr. Hiroshi Matsumoto who is UiB’s representative in Japan and associated Innovation Norway Tokyo at the Norwegian embassy in Japan. He will work to promote research cooperation between Norway and Japan. He held a presentation for the head of the deparments at MOF and the Faculty management. The presentation can be found here. Matsumoto indicated that Japan is interested in a research collaboration with the Nordic countries. One of the reasons for Japan to focus on the Nordic countries is the combination of different population registries and biobanks that exist here. He drew particular highlight to three areas. One is geriatric research. Japan is among the countries that have come furthest on geriatric and investing heavily in this field especially connected with informasjonssteknologi and robotics. The second is generation studies and the third field he particularly pointed out is stem cell research.

On all three of these areas is the research on K2.

For research groups that would be interested in the above can be cited SIU’s Explore program for cooperation with countries outside the EU: Current project can be supported by up to 300 000 NOK spread over two (2) years. Overall framework for the program is NOK 5 million. Deadline October 17, 2016. See more information here.

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