Message from the Director
The Center for Ecological research (CER) was established in 1991 as an inter-university joint-use facility aimed at promoting basic research and international cooperative work in the field of ecology. The CER is open to any scientists who conduct ecological research. The CER offers exciting opportunities for research in a variety of areas in ecology. Likewise, we support scientists by way of permitting access to our research database, and encouraging scientific meetings and/or symposia on related research subjects.
The CER owns a high performance research vessel on Lake Biwa, and is also developing long-term research activities in Japan and abroad. One such initiative is the establishment of a research station in a tropical rainforest on the island of Borneo in Malaysia. The CER also maintains experimental gardens, ponds, forests and arboretums on campus, and shares various facilities and equipment with other researchers from within, and outside, the university.
On the education side, the CER hosts graduate students enrolled in the Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University as one of its affiliated organizations.
The CER maintains a secretariat (Diversity in the Western Pacific and Asia, DIWPA (Dupa)) to manage international biodiversity researchers' gatherings. In addition, the CER has launched six collaborative projects with the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN) and has promoted interdisciplinary research based on cooperation between ecology and science and engineering / humanities social science. The RIHN is an Asian regional base of Future Earth (FE), an international collaborative research platform aiming to realize a sustainable global society, and the CER wishes to contribute to FE through DIWPA.
The CER functions as a "catalyst" to promote the development of ecology and related researcher communities. These activities cannot be done independently by the CER alone: we also receive support from you, and through these collaborations we will be able to provide a higher level of education, research and social contributions.
We are waiting for your participation!
Shin-ichi Nakano Director, CER