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In February 2025, Kyoto University European Center supported a visit by four doctoral students from the Medical Innovation Program (MIP) as part of the Global Talent Expedition Program (GTEP). The aim of this program is “to learn about the various academic and non-academic career options abroad by visiting different institutions and directly networking with the people working there.” During their one-week stay, we helped to arrange visits in Heidelberg on the first day and Munich on the third day.
The group was accompanied by Professor Dai Watanabe, the program coordinator for MIP at the Graduate School of Medicine, and Professor Shinobu Suzuki, the faculty member in charge at the Institutional Advancement and Communications (IAC) and Graduate School of Medicine. Since Professor Suzuki also requested opportunities to explore Germany’s innovation ecosystem during this visit, we proposed several potential destinations. We planned the program through online meetings and email correspondence with the participating students ahead of their stay abroad.
The group arrived at Heidelberg on 16 February. That evening, we organized a dinner with a Kyoto University alumnus who currently is a doctoral student at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg.
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| Heidelberg Castle in the background | GTEP group dining with EMBL doctoral student |
On the morning of the 17th, they visited a drug discovery company in Heidelberg and then proceeded to hei_INNOVATION, which is in charge of technology transfer and start-up support at Heidelberg University. We received an overview of their work, and the founders of two start-up companies established at Heidelberg University gave presentations. Next, we visited the nearby German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), where we received a briefing on their research and ecosystem. We were also joined by a Japanese researcher who was pursuing his doctorate at DKFZ, who shared his experience regarding the differences between the research environments and lifestyles in Japan and Germany, as well as his future prospects.
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| Meeting at hei_INNOVATION | Presentations at DKFZ |
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| Group picture at DKFZ | Visit to Kyoto University European Center |
On the 18th, the group visited a private company for the whole day by themselves.
We met them again in Munich on the 19th. In the morning, we visited Technical University of Munich (TUM), where researchers from the Graduate Center of Medicine and Health and the TUM Venture Lab introduced their respective initiatives. Our four students also presented their research. Despite having only about five minutes each, they effectively used slides to convey the essence of their research. The Q&A session with the professor and researchers that followed was very lively.
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| TranslatTUM | Presentations at TUM | Participants at TUM |
In the afternoon, the students split up to visit different companies. JETRO Munich kindly introduced us to Japanese pharmaceutical companies and German biotechnology clusters, and the students arranged the details of their visits independently.
The European Center supports the stay of young researchers in Europe in this way. We hope that the visit to Germany will inspire the GTEP participants to consider their future steps.
We would like to express our deep gratitude to all the related organisations that cooperated with us.
