 Hi folks, thank you for joining us. We'll be starting in about 30 seconds or a minute. Excellent, excellent. Hello everyone. Welcome, bienvenue, Guten Tag, Konichiwa, and Haitai, as we say in Okinawa. Before we begin, I would like to thank everyone who has worked to make this session possible, especially our co-host, the permanent mission of Japan to the United Nations, along with the Science Summit organizers and team members at OIST at the Japan Times and at Sustainable Japan by the Japan Times. My name is Heather Yang, and I'm the very proud Vice President of Communications and Public Relations at OIST, the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology. And I'm also the co-chair of the Science Summit in Japan. Today, we are very, very fortunate to have with us Dr. Peter Gruess in conversation with Tomoko Otake, the topic of their discussion is the importance of investing in research excellence for the benefit of humanity. So we have a big important topic in front of us tonight. Dr. Gruess is the president and CEO of OIST. He is an internationally renowned researcher in gene regulation and embryonic development who previously served as the president of the Max Planck Society in Germany. Otake-san is a senior writer at the Japan Times focused on health, medical and social issues. A native of Nara Prefecture, Japan's ancient capital, she has a V8 from the Osaka University of Foreign Studies, now Osaka University, and an MA in Journalism from the University of Montana. From Montana to Mallorca to Mumbai to Miyako Jima. From whatever time you're joining us, I know you will enjoy listening in on this conversation and I hope you will learn a little and be inspired too. Otake-san, the floor is yours. Thank you, Heather. Good morning to everyone participating from New York and good evening to those of you in Japan. My name is Tomoko Otake and I cover mostly health and science stories for the Japan Times, a Tokyo based English language news outlet that is in its 125th year. Over the next 15 minutes or so today, I hope to explore the importance of science in our society, why it's crucial that we invest in research for the long term, particularly in basic science and how we should reform the process of funding research here in Japan and elsewhere in the world to get the most out of investment and prove the quality of life for people on our planet. Dr. Gurus, we have a lot to cover today, but I've been looking forward to speaking with you in your capacity as a foremost biologist and science research administrator and I hope that in our time together today, we can also take up a few questions from viewers before wrapping up the session. Let's start by addressing the historic challenge we are facing at the moment, COVID-19. Over the past two and a half years, our lives have been completely appended by this pandemic and the virus is still here despite many countries adopting a policy of living with the coronavirus. According to the World Health Organization, they have been over 600 million confirmed cases COVID-19 has so far and more than 6.4 million people having confirmed have died from the disease. At the same time, however, we've been able to see how quickly scientists can rally. In just one year after the pandemic setting, several vaccines have been developed. Now, two-thirds of the world's population has received at least one dose of the vaccine and that has helped prevent an even more catastrophic outcome. Dr. Guz, is it correct to say that this outcome has not been possible without decades of basic research? Indeed, this is very correct and depending on where you put the starting point, I think the originator of the discovery of mRNA which is the molecule that encodes protein was Sydney Brenner and Sydney Brenner happens to be the scientific father of OIST. So Sydney in 1961 discovered mRNA. So it's more than 60 years of intensive research that has led to this with steps in between like in the middle of the 19s, people have tried to utilize the mRNA as a means to code for anti-cancer proteins. We needed to change the RNA to make it stable, put it into a lipid bubble and then use it. So now the interesting issue here is it was 60 years. And if I look at the generation of the vaccine, as you said, which is unheard of in the history of vaccines, it took only one year. The next best was Ebola virus, it took five years. So now when I look at what was the environment, what was the prerequisite to generate this vaccine? We come up with an interesting observation because this new route using an RNA as a stimulus to make proteins in a cell of our body has been used by two startup companies, BioNTech and Moderna. This is an interesting observation because all other companies well-known Johnson and Johnson AstraZeneca, they used a more traditional route. So we learned something from that. What we learned is that the major companies were not innovative enough, relying on young companies dynamic with the creativity. And hence, if we now call the vaccine that is sold in the world Pfizer vaccine, which this is obviously wrong because Pfizer has utilized BioNTech methods and produce it and distribute it in the world. So I think from a scientific standpoint, we have to give credit where credit is due and the credit is due to BioNTech and Moderna. And I think this demonstrates what it takes in modern research that sometimes it is 60 years until we can utilize the research over decades and do something that is of value to our society. That's very interesting. So we have like 60 years of history and two very young startups utilizing that technology. Now, keeping within the context of the pandemic, why is it do you think some countries have been more successful in mobilizing the power of scientific research than others? For example, Japan is the world's third largest economy, but we have yet to produce our own COVID-19 vaccine or single domestically developed COVID drug on the market. As a biologist, a scientist and administrator at OIST, which is a top school for science, where do you think things that might have gone wrong? Well, I think one couldn't call it gone wrong. What one should call it is what has been missing and what has not been developed. And here I'm afraid to say that the Japanese infrastructure for technology transfer that then would use IP intellectual property that is generated in universities or any research institution in order to be transferred into a product that is generated through a startup company is very poorly developed. Within Japan, we have many deficits here. There is not a proper technology transfer mechanism in most universities. There is too little venture capital, and I can give you a number, only 3% of the venture capital that is available in the United States is available for Japanese startups. So it doesn't matter that Japan is the third largest economy. What matters is the dynamics. Japan has lost the innovative capacity. Japan has to invest more in startups, more in high tech in order to generate what in this world of startups is called unicorns. That means companies like now BioNTech or Moderna that are worth more than one billion US dollar. So from this point of view, the link between university and the final production in a startup company is not working well. What it also shows that the interaction between established farmer companies, for example, and universities hasn't been working too well because otherwise they would have come up with something like this. So from my point of view, the greatest deficit is indeed the technology transfer interface. I see. That's an interesting point. Although Japan has thought about I think technology transfer and talked about it. It hasn't really had a proper mechanism. What about the funding in the research institutions that are supposed to produce the seeds of these inventions? Well, I'm awfully sorry to continue with the bad message because I'm living in Japan. I like to live in Japan. It's a wonderful country, but it does have deficits. What has happened in Japan was that the funding that is available for basic research really has stagnated for more than 15 years. So what needs to be realized, I'd say by the government in particular also by the Minister of Finance is that investment in science is not a subsidy. It's not a nice to have. I think the world agrees that investment in science is the prerequisite to prepare our minds and our societies for the challenges of the future. And again, let me go back to the RNA vaccination because it shows without a proper knowledge and know-how in this field, you couldn't do it. So in Japan, apparently, no one was working properly on mRNA and hence it couldn't be developed as a product. So having said this, one would need to understand then first how is the funding structure and what are the pros and cons of different funding structures. Now in Japan, we have mostly what I call a low trust funding. No trust funding is like competitive grant funding. And studies have shown that if you mostly fund research through competitive grant funding, it's a very inefficient way to fund research because cutting edge research, highly risky research, research that is moving into new areas, interdisciplinary research is mostly not being funded through the low trust funding or through the competitive grant funding because if you want to make money for yourself and the laboratory, you have to then apply to a funding agency. The funding agency is asking your peers and your peers will not give you the grant that is departing from the main root of science. Hence a good research funding system needs what I call the high trust funding or in other countries it's called block funding. So you need a defined period of time where you give the money to the best minds and let them roam freely in their research field. And after let's say five years, you can then look back and see what is happening and what the results have been in order to possibly adjust the funding upwards, downwards or keep it steady. This has been shown to be the most efficient way to generate breakthrough innovations, to generate breakthrough data. And let's remind ourselves everything that is new comes from fundamental research or else it wouldn't be new. So we have to remember that first you have to establish a basis and once you have this basis then you can think about technology. So science and technology if applied appropriately can have an enormous effect in order to produce solutions for our society or produce completely new directions. Let us think of what's called Tim Barners-Lee who is literally the originator of the internet and all he wanted to do is have two institutions from CERN talk to each other. And I mean he wouldn't have thought what this would do for our societies it had one of the greatest impacts in the communication of large masses in our history. So bottom line is give a good balance of high trust funding and low trust funding and specifically for Japan give more because Japan is otherwise not competitive anymore. I see. So just coming back to the definition of high trust and low trust funding this is a very basic question but just for myself you call it high trust or low trust because the government... Yes a government has of course a means to direct the research results by channeling money and this is what I call low trust because if the money is channeled say into a defined area obviously the government has to presume that this area will yield results but we know in science sometimes the actual solutions come from completely different angles so the low trust means you define a research line for five years or 10 years while the high trust means we give our scientists the money for five years and let them think about the most creative work they can deliver and out of this work usually the breakthroughs come and I have actually also a hypothesis for myself I find that the mainstream research that is funded through low trust is mostly resulting in incremental innovation while the high trust can yield what I call breakthrough innovation open completely new doors and allow then people to think of utilizing this new... this opening in order to generate a complete different line of research or products like the RNA vaccination I see when you say we need a good balance of high trust and low trust funding what is the best balance would you say and how does Japan... this is a very fair question and it's a good question and I have to say there is no absolute answer to this what we need to understand is that every science system every research system in every country has evolved with defined structures so in Japan you have players these players are not identical with players for example in Germany or the UK or United States so it's very hard to compare sometimes these systems with each other what we should also know and understand is that most Japanese universities do have an educational task so if you have to teach large numbers of students obviously you cannot focus entirely on the research side so it's a double task that you have doing education and research and I'm not talking about educational PhD students who are educated through research I'm talking about the undergrads I'm talking about teaching people for the first four years you have large numbers and you have literally you have to give each of them a basis for future studies so having said this every country however and I'm very much convinced of that needs a specific funding regime and also institutions that allow elite research because it's the elite research that has the greatest impact and if I look at the numbers that have been you know translated this research into products or patents it's very interesting they're only the highest cited papers in other words papers that are read by most also yielded an impact in patents if you analyze over a ten year period all patents in the United States you will realize that 75% of the quotations in these patents comes from publicly funded research and these papers are the papers that are in the top 10% or 5% of the highest cited work that has been published Yes I don't want to talk too much about Japan's downsides but when you talk about highly cited papers top 10% of sites papers Japan has slide it over the years and in the latest report by the Japan's National Institute of Science and Technology Policy when it comes to producing highly cited scientific papers Japan fell to 12th in the 2018 to 2020 period and that's a record low for this country down from sixth place a decade ago and from fourth to decades ago and as for the top spots China came in first followed by the US, Britain, Germany Italy, Australia, India and Canada and critics about Japan's standing have cited a number of factors like the funding cuts which is a very big factor over the years but also the lack of independence, financial and creative independence which translates to what you're talking about high trust funding but also kind of risk averse and consensus based university management that hampers a speedy decision making so think about Japan's standing and if you have a magic wand to change the institutions in Japan or elsewhere what would you do I will not start with the money I will start with the structure I think the Japan university system needs to be reformed it needs to be reformed at the governance level to have a clear separation between let's say a board of governors exclusively having a function of supervision and developing strategy with the leadership of the university the management management of the university has to have professionals in all kinds of areas not retired university professors look at Heather Heather is from Canada and she is our VP for CPR communication and PR we have people that we hired from Vienna to be our finance VP and so what needs to be realized is if you run a modern university that is supposed to be competitive you also have the entire framework that is that allows that so that's one thing the second issue is I believe Japan also has quite a problem in promoting career development for young scientists if I just look at worldwide at what age did the scientists make a discovery that has later on led to the Nobel Prize in all kinds of areas in some areas it's younger in other areas it's a little later it's been done before the age of 40 or the beginning of the 40s what that means is that the most creative times of many scientists is at a young age so what you need to give them is a complete independency and adequate funding the complete independency in a Japanese department where you have the professor, associate professors assistant professors is not common mostly it's the assistant to the professor not an assistant professor that is independent so here we really need to change the thinking so that's the second thing the next thing is if I look back at the reform of the German university system which had similar problems we have to realize that at some point in order to prevent let's say unjust promotions we had what's called a a we made it impossible if in a given university you can become full professor if you start as associate or assistant professor you had to leave why is that good because you have a horizontal movement within a country so having said this despite the fact that Japan is a reasonably large country the one thing Japan is not it's not international in science you need what Japan needs a quality control that is including foreign scientists that are top in their field very important the quality control is important so finally what you need is a system that allows within the university to also establish lighthouses in certain areas and I know that there are very good tools that the world has developed even from funding agencies like Welcome Trust or Howard Hughes or in Europe the ERC what they allow is to give the young scientists a starter grant or something equivalent and the advanced scientist and advanced grant with this you have time to develop yourself as I said 5, 10 years in order to then do this research which I call is high trust so Japan needs two things it needs to reform itself but it also needs more funding from the government Japan is just funding a little more than half of the GDP than Germany and now you cannot be surprised that Japan has about 0.5% of the GDP that comes from the government and if I can recommend to anybody a good read it's an economist from University College London Mariana Matsukato she has published a book called The Entrepreneurial State This book clearly shows that breakthrough innovations mostly start within a university with public funding so that completes the circle for the Japanese finance minister and shows that this is not a subsidy this money is investment in order to get the products that the parents are lacking in the future I see, thank you when you think about the success of OIST I think OIST is very unique in Japan and one thing that sets OIST apart from other universities apart from this structure is the diversity of its members I think I want us to talk a little bit about diversity I understand that 63% of faculty at OIST are foreign nationals, international people whereas at national university in Japan across the board the ratio of foreign faculty was about 5% in 2020 and 2021 which is not even meeting a low target set by the government to double the ratio to 6.4% over 10 years by 2020 so it's 5% now and the goal is 6.4% and also gender equality is another big concern just to cite an example at the University of Tokyo which is the nation's top university one of the top universities in Japan and one of the hardest to get into the ratio of undergraduate female students is around 20% while the ratio for graduate students is about 28.5% so what has OIST done and what lessons can others learn from OIST Well you were addressing really two questions one is the hiring of say international 63% we are having are professors that are non-Japanese and the reason why they are coming to OIST is very clear we have on the one side high trust funding and to me this is a very major attraction to most scientists that want to live their dream the dream of their research that is formed in their head and on the other hand we have 80% of our students that are non-Japanese I come to this but the bottom line is high trust funding competitive salary a structure that is transparent and that allows the people to believe that this administrative structure supports their work so now how can that be translated then how can that be done at the university level well the one thing I can guarantee is that there will not be a larger fraction of professors unless you have a grant funding system like the European Union has established where you give them five year terms for the assistant professor and maybe even longer coming from the United States, UK or Germany why should I come into a country where I am not familiar with the grant writing system with the grant system as such and write grants I see no reason why should I do this so it's not attractive simply for a scientist to come so that's my take on the internationalization of the professors but you of course went far beyond and also addressed the gender balance now the gender balance is much more complex and when I look at this is almost internationally like this and only Japan doesn't really follow that so let's let's march up the ranks of the graduate students graduate students in general worldwide you have depending on the field but let's just average it so that you have between 40 and 40 some percent of female students physics is a little less biology is a little more so bottom line is you have the notion of female graduate students across the globe now now comes the point if like in many universities in Japan the graduate students are not supported by a stipend if what happens a noise quite I would say not infrequently in the form of family you have to have a supporting system and the minimum that has to be delivered is a stipend you need much more which is for the professors equally important namely you also need if you want to build a family you need adequate child support ideally in the university there's a grad student researcher administrator or professor if you come as a woman and you know that you can your children are well taking care of by an oyster we have a child development center you feel very comfortable you feel that you can look after your kids you can even walk to the child development center in a break if it need be so what I'm saying is life is more for many people than just the research so you have to provide the adequate infrastructure now there is another issue that we need to discuss and that is if I look at the numbers so let's say 40 to 50% grad student level 40 to 50% at post-op level and then we look at OIST and we have about 18% of faculty then you have to ask yourself what is the reason for this well one reason is that worldwide the proportion of women in faculty is much too low so what happens and one has to analyze that is between the PhD and the post-op a lot of women decide to leave science it may be it may have a cultural reason but it may also be that the many roles that women feel they have to play namely mother and researcher is too much so they look for a job that is less demanding and if you look at the science as a profession it is very clear that it takes quite some time before you can feel secure and land it is the first 10-year job so the first job that is unlimited as far as your contract is concerned either says it may we need to take a greater effort to bring in the women and that's what we are currently doing by having an emphasis and if you look at some of our advertisements we say something like we prefer to hire female scientists and then we advertise we have child support system we have housing on campus we have stipends for students we have salaries and a career development path for post-ops so this as a package I hope will also allow the young professors female professors to come to Okinawa and work at OIS that's very interesting because I've seen many advertisements at university saying like we promote gender equality and we prefer to hire women we promote diversity in our hiring but if it doesn't come with a package it's not what you say it's just like on paper but not in practice so I think it's very convincing that we need to have a package with support and that just was also I think I also want to talk about regional development I think OIST has lived up this promise of conducting internationally outstanding education and research in science and technology but OIST has another mission spelled out in the university's mission statement to contribute to the sustainable development of Okinawa and Okinawa is a beautiful island and it's the same there every time but despite decades of subsidies from the central government Okinawa remains one of the poorest prefectures in the nation as a very high jobless rate low per capita income and I heard that 30% of children are living poverty so what can OIST do as a science university to address such issues and how can it give back to the community well this I think was probably one of the underlying the answer to this question was one of the underlying reasons that OIST was founded because the visionary politician Koji Omi for many years the economy in Okinawa has not improved compared to the rest of Japan hence the GDP per capita is the lowest as you pointed out rightfully of all of Japan now in order to understand this you have to be aware what are the economic contributors what are the businesses that contribute to the GDP in Okinawa well foremost it's tourism retail fishing farming construction so these are all professions where the salary level is actually fairly low and people have invested in these four or five areas over the last 50 years without actually changing the matter that would increase the income the GDP per capita for the Okinawans and hence raise the standard of living so little by little it has now transcended into the heads of the politicians that we need a revolution in Okinawa and it is from my point of view very unlikely that you can convince a major industrial company subsidiary to Okinawa my personal conviction is you have to start a high-tech culture in Okinawa these new start-ups are by definition high-tech and bring in high salaries for people that work in these companies so now let's get a little bit deeper into this matter what if you look around the world what is a driver in very general terms what is driving high-tech what is driving IP what is driving start-ups normally you have a substantial world-class scientific environment as the intellectual driver that must not be in all areas but it is a let's say it is a system that allows the start-up which they all are by necessity small to go back to the university look if they are machines if they are practices if they are procedures that they could utilize if there are people that can discuss matters at the intellectual level so this is what it takes you need an intellectual center now what you then need is you need a technology transfer that is conducive for people on one side it has to be attractive for scientists that wish to translate an intellectual property into something more substantial on the other side it has to be attractive to the venture capital world because the venture capital world they must see the value of ideas or concepts of the university or are being attracted to come in order to then invest in these projects through a start-up so now what we are having is we need a couple of say prerequisites we have a university which is not big enough but OIS has been very successful bringing in entrepreneurs from all over the world we have a total of 47 start-ups generated and I would guess probably half of these start-ups were coming with the entrepreneurs from all over the world actually one of the most successful start-ups in Japan has been realized by Indians that came to OIS in order to get this done by our financial platform now what that has led to is that OIS and particularly our tech transfer unit was successful in generating 50 million US dollar between 40 and 50 million because the yen is going down so if you translate it into dollar the 50 million are now probably worth only 50 million US dollar but be this as it may the bottom line is that this is enough money to have another 50 to 100 start-ups so OIS has the tools to finance start-ups from within OIS and finance start-ups that are coming from an intellectual environment what is missing is a proper innovation park a proper environment close to OIS where we have professional incubators where we have the housing for a number that eventually in 20 years or so could be up to 30 thousand people 3000 people that is what we have planned so we have created a master plan and that master plan is projecting in 20 25 years that we have an incubator and we have housing and we are employing about 3000 people now if we employ this number it would actually close the gap of the GDP between mainland Japan and Okinawa by one third so just one innovation park will lift the GDP up and I am very happy to note that the just re-elected governor Tamaki has said that he wants to create an innovation hub at OIS so I will remind him of that statement during the election campaign because I believe that this is the root that could help Okinawa to increase the standard of living and raise the salary level for those that are connected with the innovation park Interesting and also you believe in the idea of infusing curiosity in science among young people in Okinawa as well right? Very much so because we have two programs and these programs have two components we go out into schools grad students, postdocs and teach the children in high schools and younger but also we accept Okinawans to come to OIS in order to raise the consciousness of science as a profession what is it? If you are like 16, 17 years old you have no idea what science is like as a profession you also can use the scientific platform to form let's say your future professional perspectives and I've seen people that became a neuroscientist I have another girl from Okinawan high school that now wants to become an MD working close in research so you know what I mean it's all of a sudden these people open for themselves a different world of perspective and I think this is what OIS can deliver to Okinawa if we spread the word like what we are doing tonight Great, thank you very much it's been very interesting and very inspiring now I'd like to open the floor to some questions if anybody has them and actually I think we have received several let me read some of you and I'll go to you one by one first I have a question from a viewer asking why did you come here to OIS originally what intrigued you and what really drew you to this work in Okinawa it is a beautiful spot but I imagine it is hard work how would you respond? I mean as you said in your introduction kindly the president of Max Planck society and the Max Planck society is one of the most successful research organizations now having been having worked as a scientist at Max Planck and having been the president I have collected experience what it takes to make an institution to be competitive and world-class and when I was offered the position as a president and CEO of Okinawa of OIS I came here and it took only a few minutes to see what the atmosphere was like as you said yourself as a president and CEO of Okinawa as a president and CEO of Okinawa as a president and CEO of Okinawa so if you go into our campus and you see people from all over the world you feel the spirit you feel that this is something you can build on why can you build on because then the Japanese government provided a role OIS and I hope very much and that was what attracted me that the basic principles are very much Max Planck like except that we were a graduate university which Max Planck isn't so we can give degrees PhD degrees which is even a little better than what Max Planck can do but the bottom line is everything else let the best let them work in peace and then translate what is possible for translation I think this was quite attractive to me and that's why I came and I hope that the Japanese government will continue to increase the funding because this is necessary great thank you so I know you speak passionately on personalized medicine could you please talk to us in broad terms about the important future of precision medicine I believe that this password personalized medicine will really change the medicine of the future I believe that our insight into how an organ and how an organism works our insight of correlate genetic information into programs our insight into the programs that can direct for example organogenesis will allow us to really do precision medicine based on our individual DNA that each one of us has so I see two areas here at least and one is the predictive ability predictive ability means that by way of your DNA you also have a certain fate because you may have a mutation and one of the examples here was Angelina Jolie who had a mutation that inevitably would have led to breast cancer so she decided to have the breast removed in order to avoid getting cancer so what I'm trying to point out here is that all of us have a different type of genome and this genome also establishes to a certain extent not 100% correct some traits are multi gene multi genetic so it needs several genes that work together in concert so that's why in some cases you need several genes to for example give you a certain eye color however you will have and this is what I think will happen each child that is born will get an information for life and we can utilize this information to keep this child healthy as long as possible and then also in terms of the second domain directed repair we can already direct repair mutations for example in our blood where we can change the sequence of a mutated gene to a normal gene we can have a program that allows us to direct organogenesis in a tissue culture in a petri dish that may help us to deliver missing organs so I think the medicine of the future will be a different medicine as to what we have today primarily because we will see a shift from therapy to prediction and prevention great okay we have a comment from Stephanie I think Okinawa safe is famous for its blue zones I think we should learn from this part of Japan as in the science of longevity Okinawans are known to have less cancers for example do you think living in Okinawa has extended your life I think this is a it certainly has extended my life because it has driven me to do more sports by snorkeling and but it also may have extended my life by looking at what are the factors that contribute to a longer and healthy life and this is a question I'm actually very interested in addressing as a scientist so OIS is very much engaged in looking at what factors determine healthy aging we are looking at analytical systems that allow us to have some correlations we are looking at factors that can extend a healthy life and I hope very much that we will get also a clinic here that would allow us to then examine the blue zone old people or elderly in order to get an idea in analytical terms what makes these people feel that they are healthy and that they are healthy so there is a whole package and I think Okinawa is an ideal place to address these scientific questions great thank you we had a wonderful opportunity to talk today thank you very much Dr. Gruss for sitting down with me before I close I would like to introduce Maria Angelos Dijon who will talk briefly about sustainable Japan section of Japan times Maria Angelos thank you so much Otake-san and Dr. Gruss for this amazing talk it was very good and I learned a lot about the sustainable Japan series at the Japan times before closing the series I would like to invite you to if you want to learn more about Japan's efforts to meet the SDGs please visit sustainable.japantimes.com where you will find all sort of interviews and stories showcasing what Japan is doing towards more sustainable society by the Japan times great thank you Maria Angelos and thank you Dr. Gruss again for the wonderful session tonight and thank you everyone for tuning in tonight and please don't forget to fill in the feedback for the SAMI program thank you again and good night thank you everybody bye bye good night