The RIKEN CDB held its annual Open House on Saturday, October 25, 2014. The crisp, sunny fall weather helped to draw close to 1,500 people to the Center to see and learn firsthand about the latest research in development and regenerative biology.

This year’s Open House featured public lectures by Tomoya Kitajima (Team Leader, Laboratory for Chromosomal Segregation) who talked about the causes of oocyte aging and by Takashi Tsuji (Group Director, Laboratory for Organ Regeneration) on the latest developments of research carried out in his laboratory related to teeth and hair regeneration. Twenty-four laboratories also took part in the event by organizing booths that introduced their research through posters and alluring research images. Many laboratories set up microscopes at their booths to allow the visitors to observe actual cell and tissue samples as well as some model organisms used in their research. Scientists and graduate students were on hand to explain and answer questions about their research from the visitors who dropped by their booths. In a special lecture program co-organized with Kobe City, Masayo Takahashi (Project Leader, Laboratory for Retinal Regeneration) gave a talk to a full crowd on the current state of the her clinical research using iPSC-derived retinal pigment epithelial cells at the neighboring Institute for Biomedical Research and Innovation.

In addition to the CDB, open houses were held at the other RIKEN centers and nearby universities and hospitals located on Port-Island on the same day.