Dr. Teruhiko Wakayama, Team Leader picked for NISTEP Researchers Award

December 25, 2008

The National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTEP), an institute of MEXT, has chosen Dr. Teruhiko Wakayama, Team Leader of the Laboratory for Genomic Reprogramming, Center for Developmental Biology, RIKEN Kobe Institute, as a recipient of the NISTEP Researchers Award. The award is in recognition of Dr. Wakayama and his team's success in cloning using material from the nucleus of cells taken from dead, frozen mice. The NISTEP Researchers Award is presented at the end of each year by NISTEP in recognition of significant contributions in science and technology. In 2008, 10 groups and 12 individuals were selected in all the categories of this Award. For more details on Dr. Wakayama's research, refer to the following website. RIKEN CDB Dr. Teruhiko Wakayama Teruhiko Wakayama received his B. Sc. and M. Sc. from Ibaraki University, and was awarded a Ph. D. in reproductive biology from the University of Tokyo Department of Veterinary Anatomy in 1996. He received a postdoctoral fellowship from the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science in 1996 and spent the next two years at the Yanagimachi lab in the University of Hawaii Medical School, where he succeeded in creating the world's first cloned mouse. He was appointed to an assistant professorship at the same institution in 1998, and moved to the Rockefeller University as a research assistant professor in 1999. He spent a year as a researcher at Advanced Cell Technology before returning to Japan to take his current position at the RIKEN CDB.