News
2023/10/10
The 2nd Academic Entrepreneurs' Cafe - New Relationship between Research and Society through Crowdfunding - was held!
The 2nd Academic Entrepreneurs’ Cafe – New Relationship between Research and Society Connected by Crowdfunding” was held at INDEST, Tokyo Tech Tamachi Campus on Friday, October 6, 2023. Many students, researchers, and supporters from GTIE participating universities gathered at the venue, and many continued to actively interact with each other after the event.
The Academic Entrepreneurs’ Cafe was started as a series of events for researchers to feel more familiar with startups as a means of social implementation of research results.
In this second installment of the series, titled “New Relationship between Research and Society through Crowdfunding,” Ryosuke Shibafuji of Academist Corporation, which operates a research crowdfunding business, and Ryosuke Shibafuji, a doctoral student at Hiroshima University’s Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering, who took on the challenge of establishing a university startup using research crowdfunding, will speak about their research. D. student Yuki Nakano of the Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering, Hiroshima University, and Takahito Watanabe, a lecturer at the Bioinnovation Institute, University of Tokushima, were invited to the event.
The event started with a talk session in which the guests introduced themselves and spoke passionately about what they wanted to share with the participants.
In the panel discussion that followed, the three guests talked about the timing and motivation of their startup challenges, and also discussed entrepreneurship education at universities. In addition to providing the knowledge side, the panel also commented on the importance of developing facilities and examples of predecessors who have actually taken on the challenge of startups. We hope that this event will help to share some of the examples of our predecessors.
The talk session and panel discussion will be video-streamed online at a later date. If you were unfortunately unable to attend this event and would like to listen to the talks in detail again, please watch the videos!
The 3rd Academic Entrepreneurs’ Cafe will be held on Tuesday, November 7, from 5:00 p.m. at Tokyo Medical and Dental University TIP (Bldg. 8) under the title of “Medical-Industrial Collaboration: Sudden Encounter.
We look forward to seeing you there.
Finally, we would like to thank all the GTIE officials and speakers for their efforts in organizing the event, all the researchers who provided valuable input in the planning stages, and all those who helped make this event possible.
*Event Details: https: //gtie.jp/en/events/41038/
[Date & Time ]October 6(Friday), 16:00-18:00 (doors open at 15:45)
[Venue ] INDEST 2F (Tokyo Tech Tamachi Campus) 1 minute walk from Tamachi Station
[Target ] Students, young researchers, faculty members, and other professionals who are interested in researchers challenging startups.
[ Guest ]
Mr. Takahito Watanabe
Representative Director and CEO, Grilas Corporation, Lecturer, Institute for Bioinnovation, The University of Tokushima
Doctor of Engineering
Biography: After completing the doctoral program at the University of Tokushima in 2013, he worked as a specially-appointed assistant professor at the University of Tokushima’s Center for Collaboration in Agriculture, Technology, and Commerce before assuming his current position. He has been studying crickets since his 4th year at university and started Grilas Inc. in 2019 to make crickets useful to society. He is currently conducting research on the phylogenetic breeding of useful insects, mainly edible crickets, by utilizing genome information and genome editing technology.
Yuki Nakano
D. Student, Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering, Hiroshima University
Biography: After completing his Master’s degree at Hiroshima University in 2013, he worked for a chemical manufacturer for 8 years in R&D and technical sales and business development in the field of electronic devices and semiconductors. 2020, he entered Kwansei Gakuin University, Graduate School of Business Strategy, where he received a Master of Business Administration (Professional) / MBA degree. After hearing about his mentor’s research results on “single molecule dielectrics,” he thought, “This will be a technology that will change the world! He will establish Material Gate Corporation in 2023.
Mr. Ryosuke Shibafuji
Representative Director and CEO, Academist, Inc.
Brief history: Graduated from Tokyo Metropolitan University with a doctoral degree. While in graduate school, he felt that laboratories were too closed, so he organized a social gathering for graduate students from various fields. In April 2014, he launched “academist,” a crowdfunding site that enables researchers to obtain research funding by sharing their research ideas. With a vision of “contributing to the creation of a future society by realizing an open academic industry.” The company’s vision is to “contribute to the creation of a future society,” and it promotes businesses that connect researchers and individuals as well as researchers and corporations.
*Nao Hosokawa, Specially Appointed Associate Professor, Innovation Design Organization, Tokyo Institute of Technology
[ Agenda ].
Part 1: Talks and Panel Discussion by Guests 16:00-17:20
Part 2: Opinion exchange with the audience 17:20-18:00
(Reference) 1st Academic Entrepreneurs’ Cafe
GTIE Tokyo Tech Office (Nao Hosokawa)