Having completed his first year of his master’s studies in the Biotechnology program in the School of Life Sciences and Technology at Bandung Institute of Technology in Indonesia, Hansley Kurniawan joined this year’s CiRA Research Internship Program to see if the research environment was right for his pursuit of a Ph.D. in the future.

"I wanted to know more about Japan, especially because I want to apply for the Ph.D. program at CiRA," Kurniawan explained. "That is the main goal, like a stepping stone to get a Ph.D. here."

Back home in Indonesia, Kurniawan has been examining the function of banana lectins as a diagnostic tool for cancer. While he has learned a lot about iPS cells in lectures, the internship provided him with his first chance to work with them.

"I have studied the principles of cell culture at my university, so now I want to apply that knowledge to practice."

During the internship, Kurniawan spent about six weeks—from June to July—in the laboratory of Associate Professor Makoto Ikeya in the Department of Clinical Application and had the opportunity to culture iPS cells and induce them into neural crest cells to generate mesenchymal stem cells. Putting theory to practice, he used fluorescence-activated cell sorting to purify differentiated cells for proteomics and miRNA profiling analyses. Although he has taken classes on bioinformatics previously, this was the first time he applied what he learned to analyze his own experimental data.

Learning about the internship program through an alumnus of his university, who is now a graduate student in the Ikeya Laboratory, he enjoyed working with fellow lab members and learning about their research projects.

"iPS cells have great potential for regenerative medicine," Kurniawan said. "It is great that I got to learn to culture them."

Outside of CiRA, he also had some time to enjoy what the Kansai area has to offer, with trips to Osaka to enjoy the food and around Kyoto to visit various shrines and temples.

With the positive experience he had through the internship, he is even more excited about the possibility of returning for his Ph.D. studies. We hope to see you back at CiRA in a few years, Kurniawan!