In May, 2010 the University of Edinburgh's Principal, Prof Sir Timothy O'Shea and the President of the University of Tsukuba, Prof Nobuhiro Yamada, signed an Agreement for Academic Exchange and Cooperation. This agreement is meant to foster and encourage academic exchange between the Universities of Tsukuba and Edinburgh, with a particular emphasis on, but not limited to, PhD student exchange.

The Univeristy of Tsukuba is a new university (est 1973), but is already ranked in the top 10 research universities in Japan and Tsukuba City has the highest percentage of PhD residents of any Japanese city.

As part of this agreement several workshops in Tsukuba and Edinburgh have been held. Dr Tilo Kunath from our Centre organised the third workshop in the series, which took place on Monday, 13th June 2011.

Speakers from the University of Tsukuba included Dr. Osamu Ohneda, Dr. Masayuki Masu, Dr. Satoru Takahashi, Dr. Akira Shibuya and Dr. Masatsugu Ema. Additional contributions were made by Edinburgh based researchers Dr. Tilo Kunath, Prof Ian Chambers, Prof John Iredale, Dr. David Hay, Dr. Thomas Pratt and Dr. Nik Morton.

The picture shows co-organisers Dr Tilo Kunath and Dr Satoru Takahashi.