Next generation of Team Leaders enter CDB

January 4, 2011 –The RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology has welcomed two new Team Leaders and one Research Unit Leader since the beginning of the 2010 fiscal year last April. These latest PI appointments will seek to bring fresh ideas and energy to the CDB’s research program, and contribute to the next decade of the Center’s work in exploring the fields of development, organogenesis, regeneration, and stem cell biology.

Takeshi Imai	Tatsuo Shibata	Erina Kuranaga

Takeshi Imai plans study the organization of the olfactory system in mouse as head of the Laboratory for Sensory Circuit Formation, which went started its research program in July 2010.

Tatsuo Shibata will bring his background in physics to bear to the search for general operating principles of living systems in the Research Unit for Physical Biology. His lab began its research at the CDB in October 2010.

Erina Kuranaga, the new head of the Laboratory for Histogenetic Dynamics, will study the roles played signaling pathways that underlie programmed cell death in tissue development. The Kuranaga lab joined the Center in January 2011.

With these most recent appointments, the CDB is now home to 24 laboratories conducting original research, and an additional six support labs providing a range of technical services.