Past Events

In this workshop, you'll learn how to transform research, data, and technology into narrative beats that tell the right stories to the right audience. While the workshop centers on climate communication, the methods introduced are applicable to any research that aims to move people through scientific storytelling. If you're interested in delivering your message beyond the scientific community, we'd love to have you join us.

OIST COI-NEXT Annual Symposium 2026 Sustaining Innovation Beyond the Lab Date: March 9th, 2026, at 9:30-17:00 Venue: Sydney Brenner Lecture Theater (B250) Target audience: General audience/ open to everyone at OIST and beyond. Registration Deadline: February 26, 2026

OIST Science Challenge is a unique opportunity for participants to extend their scientific education and experience research at OIST.

OIST サイエンスチャレンジではOIST教員、ポスドク、博士課程学生による数々のセミナー(英語)を受講し、OISTで行われている研究を体験します。

This public lecture will be held in Japanese only, with no interpretation provided. パブリック・レクチャー　『和音の科学』 日時：2026年3月7日（土）14:00-15:00（開場 13:30） 場所：OIST サイエンススタジオ　ゆんラボ・未来館（読谷村総合情報総合センター） 講演者：東京大学生産技術研究所教授　羽田野 直道博士 講演言語：日本語 対象：中学生以上 定員：70名 登録開始日：2026年2月24日（火） 参加費：無料

TSVP Talk Language: English (no interpretation). Target audience: General audience / everyone at OIST and beyond. Freely accessible to all OIST members and guests without registration (also via Zoom).

Mirror Lab Symposium: Frontiers in Recent Human Evolution We will describe and discuss projects that explore genetic variants that emerged in the evolution of modern and archaic humans, and how such archaic variants affects humans today. We will also discuss projects that use ancient DNA to reconstruct the early peopling and history of the Japanese Archipelago. We will explore how we can intensify our collaborations in these areas and brainstorm about future research directions. 

Guest seminar hosted by CDQT. Speaker: Prof. Jeroen van den Brink (Institute for Theoretical Solid State Physics, IFW Dresden) Title: Topological surface superconductivity in PtBi2

Workshop on Cognitive Neurorobotics Organized by Jun Tani, Tani Unit, OIST March 5, 13:30—18:00, Seminar room L5D23, Lab 5 Tentative program 13:30-13:40: Introduction, Jun Tani, OIST 13:40-14:40: Collective Intelligence in LLM agents, Takashi Ikegami, Univ. of Tokyo 14:40-15:40: Deep Active Inference for Real-World Robotic Systems, Shingo Murata, Keio Univ. 15:40-16:00: Coffee break 16:00-17:00: A Consideration of Robot Foundation Models as Embodied Intelligence, Tetsuya Ogata, Waseda Univ. 17:00-18:00: Propagation of Mind Through the Mechanism of Superposition, Hiro Iizuka, Hokkaido Univ.  

Language: English

QG Seminar Speaker: Will Horowitz (University of Cape Town) Title: Hamilton Revisited: The Action Principle for Initial Value Problems

Title: In-plane oscillations of a slack catenary using assumed modes. Speaker: Dr. Anindya Chatterjee, Professor, Mechanical Engineering, IIT Kanpur (collaborators: Bidhayak Goswami and Indrasis Chakraborty)

Join Zoom link Target audience: Interns, Students, PostDocs, and those who are interested in the same research field. Language: English

The Biological, Artificial, and Quantum Intelligence 2026 International Workshop (BAQ2026) will bring together world-leading experts in neural networks, neuroscience, quantum machine learning, and related areas of intelligence and complexity. It aims to provide a platform for discussions on recent developments and future perspectives in these fields. Open to OIST Community!

OIST Workshop | Website | Main organizer: Tomomi Kiyomitsu (Cell Division Dynamics Unit) | OIST members are welcome to attend all scientific sessions. Meals are closed sessions for registered participants only.

The Graduation Ceremony to award degrees to those who graduated in the period May 2025 to January 2026. The ceremony will take place at the OIST Auditorium on Friday, February 27, 2026.

Moderated by Lauren Ha, Associate Vice President for Technology Development and Innovation, the conversation will explore Kris’s career, current initiatives, and his perspective on the global tech industry. After a 20‑minute interview, the floor will open for audience questions. The event will be followed by a special OIST Teatime in Center Court.

TSVP Talk Language: English (no interpretation). Target audience: General audience / everyone at OIST and beyond. Freely accessible to all OIST members and guests without registration (also via Zoom).

Speaker: Cindy Poo,  a senior scientist with the Allen Institute for Neural Dynamics and an Affiliate Assistant Professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Washington

Speaker: Dr. Samuël Borza, University of Vienna Title: Ollivier-Ricci curvature in non-smooth Lorentzian geometry and causal set theory Abstract: This talk will explore some aspects of non-smooth Lorentzian geometry, the mathematical framework underlying Einstein’s general relativity, which is currently being developed. Just as metric length spaces provide a synthetic generalisation of smooth Riemannian manifolds, the time-separation function plays the role of a “distance” in Lorentzian geometry. The need for a non-smooth Lorentzian framework appeared early on, most famously with Penrose’s singularity theorems. After introducing the basic concepts and some initial results in this synthetic setting, we will turn to causal set theory, a radical approach to quantum gravity in which spacetime is modelled as a discrete causal graph. I will formulate a new notion of curvature, inspired by Ollivier-Ricci curvature on metric graphs, using optimal transport between causal diamonds. We will see that it does recover Ricci curvature on smooth Lorentzian manifolds, and numerical examples will be presented.