Speakers

Hironobu Fujiwara attained his baccalaureate from Kyoto Pharmaceutical University, and went on to receive his M.S. and Ph.D. from Osaka University, the latter in 2003, for his work on the characterization of the human laminin-8 protein. From 2003 to 2007, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Osaka University Institute for Protein Research, with support from the ERATO Sekiguchi Biomatrix Signaling Project (2003–2006). He then moved to the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, where he completed a second postdoctoral fellowship before returning to Japan in 2012 to take a position as a Team Leader at the RIKEN CDB. He studies the role of reciprocal interactions between epidermal stem cells and their environment in regulating mammalian skin morphogenesis and regeneration.