Keio-Med Open Access (KOA) Facility

Center Director: Hideyuki Okano (Professor, School of Medicine)

Campus: Shinanomachi

This center has aimed to enhance the sophistication and convenience of shared equipment in order to improve the environment for joint use and collaborative research both inside and outside the university. The core of its activities is the "New Shared Use" project, which contributes to developing the infrastructure for research promotion by promoting the cross-faculty sharing of research equipment among the School of Medicine, Faculty of Science and Technology, Faculty of Pharmacy, and others, thereby vitalizing interaction among students, researchers, research support staff, and research equipment development engineers.

Joint Usage/Research Center

■ Ongoing Activities from the Previous Fiscal Year: Background, Rationale, and Goals

As the final year of the New Shared Use project (the third year of the project adopted in FY2016), we will promote the introduction and operation of the "Shared Support Web System" (SimpRent). To increase the utilization rate of shared equipment, we will actively conduct public relations activities, provide technical support, and improve the surrounding environment.

■ New Activity Goals and Content for Fiscal Year 2018, and Implementation Background

We aim to increase the number of newly registered pieces of equipment for "visualization." We will also popularize the reservation system and, in conjunction with the post-use time-stamping function, build a new billing system in collaboration with the Office for Research Coordination and Administration, the Property Management Division, the Finance and Accounting Division, and others to improve user convenience. We will continue and expand the initiative of having technicians from equipment manufacturers stationed at the shared facilities about once a month to provide technical consultation to users.

In November 2018, to enable an application as the Keio-Med Open Access (KOA) Facility for the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology's (MEXT) "Joint Usage/Research Center" program, we will develop and pilot a system for nationwide public calls for and screening of collaborative research projects.

■ Implementation Details for the Fiscal Year's Business Plan, Research Outcomes, and Degree of Achievement

Our activities centered on promoting the MEXT "Project for Promoting Shared Use of Advanced Research Infrastructure (Program for Supporting Introduction of New Sharing Systems)" (hereinafter, the New Shared Use project), which was adopted in FY2016. Specifically, in addition to the "visualization" of large-scale research equipment in on-campus shared facilities, we promoted the "visualization" of large-scale research equipment belonging to individual laboratories. We advanced the development of the "Shared Support Web System" (SimpRent), designing it not only for "visualization" but also to function as a reservation system and, in the future, as a billing system.

The registration status for visualization is: limited to within laboratories (28 units), for registered users within Keio (17 units), and unrestricted (47 units). Additionally, there were 960 user accounts and 422 registered laboratory groups (98 from Yagami, 320 from Shinanomachi, 3 from Shiba-Kyoritsu, and 1 from Shonan Fujisawa). The number of "visualized" pieces of equipment is steadily increasing, and it is expected to contribute to the vitalization of collaborative research both inside and outside the university. Under the guidance of the Vice-President for Research and the university headquarters (Office for Research Coordination and Administration), a framework for promoting the shared use project was established.

Faculty and staff from the School of Medicine, Faculty of Science and Technology, and Faculty of Pharmacy held close meetings and worked together to develop the research infrastructure. The "Shared Support Web System" (SimpRent), developed through the New Shared Use project, began pilot operation at the Imaging Center (managed by the Faculty of Science and Technology, with participation from the School of Medicine's Electron Microscope Laboratory). At the Center for Disease Model Analysis (managed by the Faculty of Pharmacy), registration for "visualization" also progressed, including for large-scale equipment managed by School of Medicine laboratories. The Omics Analysis Center (managed by the School of Medicine) proceeded with the registration of equipment such as next-generation sequencers.