1st class of students

Now in their fourth year, these students are strengthening their efforts to summarize their research results and present their findings.

Anti-Aging Team
Research content –
In order to lengthen the healthy life span and spread the traditional tea drinking habit in our society, the team’s goal is to develop a new tea product with high anti-aging property.
Latest topics –
In PBTS I, cooperating with Matoba tea factory and Tohouen tea company, we demonstrated that tea leaves with a long time steaming and under freeze-dry method, and crashed in smaller pieces, could extract more catechins and Vitamin C. In PBTS II, we hypothesized that blending different sizes of crushed leaves can maximize the release of anti-oxidant molecules and make it possible to brew the same tea leaves 2 or 3 times without altering the taste. We are conducting chemistry experiments and sensory tests on our blending tea samples.

Education Team
Research content –
We designed a course on programming for high school students, aiming at improving their understanding of mathematical induction, which is a difficult topic in high school math. In our course, the students make a simple game using a technique similar to mathematical induction.
Latest topics –
This summer, we gave two lectures at Saitama Prefectural Kawagoe Girls’ Senior High School. To evaluate the outcome of our class, we will be conducting a test on mathematical induction in two groups: the class of students who participated in our lectures, and a non-participants class.

Synchronization Team
Research content –
In order to unveil the mechanism of interaction between cultured skin cells and collagen, we investigate the collective patterns that cultured skin fibroblasts form on collagen-coated dishes.
Latest topics –
By focusing on the fact that the shape of cultured skin cells depends on collagen concentration, we are improving our mathematical model and testing with simulations.

Water Treatment Team
Research content –
Our study is aimed at improving an existing wastewater treatment system using enzymes for wastewater from food factories to remove oil that is a big environmental burden.
Latest topics –
We carried out oil-degradation experiments with some collaborators such as food factories, and presented the results at an international conference in England.

2nd class of students

Doctoral program students in PBTS II are working on new themes.

Green Filtering Team
Research content –
Development of a biomimic-green filter for air pollutants.
Latest topics –
We visited Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology researchers to discuss biomimetics. We are planning a collaboration with a laboratory of hydro simulation.

3rd class of students

These students are proceeding with their activities by strengthening their relationships with the business world.

Health Care Team
Research content –
Our project goal is to develop a recipe recommendation application in order to solve diet-related health problems and promote people’s awareness of environmental issues.
Latest topics –
We are developing a recipe recommendation application using Ajinomoto’s recipes data. One of our members is working for a project “Panasonic – AIST” team, engaging in the development of dialogue system through image for recipe recommendation.

Science Education Team
Research content –
In order to respond to the social problem of gender diversity among specialists in pure sciences we seek to promote female role models for students at women high schools. The aim is to increase interest in science education.
Latest topics –
We interviewed a female leader of science working for a company in business with 3M, NTT Docomo and Kose. We learnt about science talent in society and collected data on role models.

4th class of students

Ten students started their team-based research in October 2017.

Fly Trap Team
Research content –
In order to control fly laying eggs in fruit and contribute to the cultivation of organic fruit in Japan, we explore new fly-repellent substances.

Traffic Jam Team
Research content –
In the future, autonomous cars will be put to practical use. Traffic will be mixed with normal and autonomous cars. We aim at finding a new method of easing jam in the mixed traffic by computer simulations.

Water Recycling Team
Research content –
We aim to make effective use of greywater resources for irrigation by reusing household waste water from washing machine. In the initial step, we propose to develop a feasible system for removing surfactant in water.