Kent State and Premier Japanese University Collaborate on Research

KENT, OH - Education can't be contained by national borders. That's the lesson that Kent State University and researchers from Japan are teaching students. The Flashes sent students to Kyoto University to study early primates.

All of this is thanks for a memorandum signed by Todd Diacon, Kent State's senior vice president for academic affairs and provost, James Blank, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and Kyoto University's Takakazu Yumoto, director of the Primate Research Institute.

Students will dig into the theory of primates as the template for humans. Through that topic, researchers will explore evolutionary genetic analysis and aggressive behavior, as well Alzheimer's disease.

Kent has sent students out to Japan for the past two years via fellowships from the National Science Foundation and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. The students were sent to the Primate Research Institute both years.

“I’m very interested in learning and memory, and how the brain has changed to allow for increased memory and learning in humans,” said Emily Munger who spent part of her academic career studying in Japan.

Photo from Kent State University