On Thursday, April 15, 2021, President Nagahiro Minato received an online courtesy call from President Dieter Lenzen of the Universität Hamburg which is one of Kyoto University’s Strategic Partners (SPs) institutions. Kyoto University Research Administration Office (KURA) supports research exchange with international partners through the SP’s scheme.

The attendees from Universität Hamburg were President Dieter Lenzen, Ms. Courtney Peltzer-Hönicke (Head of the Department of International Affairs) and Dr. Ariane Neumann (Head of the Department of University Strategy). And from Kyoto University, President Nagahiro Minato, Professor Kyoko Inagaki (Executive Director and Executive Vice-President for Gender Equality, International Affairs, Public Relations and External Relations), Professor Yasuyuki Kono (Vice-President for International Strategy and Director of the International Strategy Division) and Professor Mika Yokoyama (Deputy Executive Vice-President for Gender Equality and International Affairs and Director of the European Center) participated in the meeting.

In the beginning, President Lenzen stated that the friendship between the two universities remained strong despite the effects of COVID-19 as conducting joint research and publishing joint papers had been continued, and further interaction should be promoted once the situation got better. The two presidents also discussed the role of individual universities in higher education in their respective countries and came up with an idea of having opportunities to exchange views on educational and research issues after the pandemic.

The goal of the strategic partnership is to expand collaboration in a wide range of fields and deepen the relationship between the two universities. In this respect, various collaborative ideas were suggested during the meeting including internationalization, the review process of KPI, collaboration in medical fields such as infectious diseases and cancer research, and the development of trilateral network to include other universities.

KURA will continue to actively support exchanges with overseas research universities and work to enhance the international research activities of our researchers.

(Upper row, from left) Vice-President Kono, Executive Vice-President Inagaki, Deputy Executive Vice-President Yokoyama
(Middle row, from left) President Minato, President Lenzen, Dr. Neumann
(Lower row) Ms. Peltzer-Hönicke