As CiRA has entered the third year since its foundation as a full-scale institute at Kyoto University in April 2010, Dr. Wataru Fujibuchi has assumed the post of the 27th principal investigator as a professor of the Department of Cell Growth and Differentiation.

Fujibuchi previously led the Cell Function Design Team at the Computational Biology Research Center (CBRC), Advanced Industrial Science and Technology Institute (AIST) in Japan.

After graduation from the Department of Biological Science, Faculty of Science, Hiroshima University, he was engaged in research on physiological function design and completed his Ph.D. at the Institute of Chemical Research, Kyoto University. He used to work at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the U.S. Fujibuchi has been studying on development of a stem cell information analysis approach since 2007.

Fujibuchi's laboratory will work on the analysis of iPS cells by taking statistics, informatics, and mathematics approaches, and building large-scale computer systems. His team will also develop algorithm and database for bioinformatics.

"My laboratory will try to meet CiRA researchers' needs for bioinformatics. At the same time, we will develop methods to analyze cells systematically, seeking to advance theoretical studies that can answer such a question as "how many cells remain undiscovered," Fujibuchi said.

Meanwhile, CiRA Director Shinya Yamanaka has taken the post of the head of the Facility for iPS Cell Therapy (FiT) to take the initiative in the generation of clinical-grade iPS cells.