Brief Biography of Domestic Organizing Committees

Biography

	Junko Amemura-Maekawa National Institute of Infectious Diseases, Tokyo, Japan
PhD, Senior Research Scientist, Department of Bacteriology I, National Institute of Infectious Diseases, Tokyo, Japan, and the manager of the Legionella Reference Center. The activities of the Legionella Reference Center include genotyping of Legionella strains and standardization of Legionella detection and typing methods.

Tetsuji Aoyagi Department of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, Faculty of Medicine, Toho University, Tokyo, Japan

Tetsuji Aoyagi is Associate Professor of Department of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, Faculty of Medicine, Toho University. He received his medical degree from Tohoku University School of Medicine at 2002. He completed residency in Internal Medicine and fellowship training Infectious Diseases and Pulmonary Medicine and received PhD from Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine at 2010. His research focuses on the role of innate immunity and/or pathogen virulence in sepsis and ARDS in both animal and human based translational research. Recently, he and his colleagues investigated the role of IL-36 cytokines in Legionella pneumonia.

Kohei Arasaki Tokyo University of Pharmacy and Life Sciences, Tokyo, Japan

Kohei Arasaki is associate professor at Tokyo University of Pharmacy and Life Sciences. He joined Prof. Craig Roy’s laboratory at Yale University from 2007 to 2011. His area of expertise in Legionella infection is intracellular trafficking of vacuole containing Legionella. Especially, his research is focused on relationship of Legionella effectors with host factors that are implicated in intracellular membrane trafficking such as Rab GTPases or SNAREs. Currently, he is also interested in how Legionella evades host defense machineries such as autophagy or apoptosis.

Chiaki Kajiwara Department of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at Toho University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan

Chiaki Kajiwara is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at Toho University School of Medicine, where she has been mainly working on the infectious immune response in Legionnaires' disease (LD). Her research focuses on the analysis of pathogens of respiratory tract infections, including Legionella, and their host immune responses. In addition to her research work, she also devotes herself to the research guidance of graduate students and has achieved numerous educational achievements.

Soichiro Kimura Department of Infection Control and Prevention, Shonan University of Medical Sciences, Kanagawa, Japan

Soichiro Kimura is a full professor of Department of Infection Control and Prevention, Shonan University of Medical Sciences, Japan. He obtained his Ph.D. from Chiba University, Japan. He joined Prof. Steven L Kunkel’s laboratory at University of Michigan from 2013 to 2014. His research focus is understanding host-pathogen interaction in mouse models, including how the host controls bacterial or viral infection and how pathogens counteract the host’s immune response.

Tomoko Kubori Graduate School of Medicine, Gifu University, Gifu, Japan

Tomoko Kubori is an associate professor in Graduate School of Medicine, Gifu University. She obtained her PhD in Genetics from The Graduate University for Advanced Studies. After her postdoctral training at Yale University School of Medicine, she moved to the Research Institute for Microbial Diseases, Osaka University in 2004 as an assistant professor. She started her scientific career in the field of bacterial flagella and shifted the research subject to bacterial pathogenesis at Yale. She currently has a long-standing research interest in the bacterial secretion systems and the effector protein-mediated host-pathogen interaction focusing on Legionella systems. She has served on the editorial board of PLOS Pathogens since 2012.

Fumiaki Kura National Institute of Infectious Diseases, Tokyo, Japan

Fumiaki Kura is Guest Researcher at Department of Bacteriology I, National Institute of infectious Diseases, Tokyo, working on prevention and control of the risk of Legionella infection. He is a founding member of the Japanese Society of Hospital Water Hygiene, working on solving microbial problems in the water environment of medical institutions. He had been Senior Research Scientist at National Reference Center for Legionella for 17 years and Division of Biosafety Control and Research for 5 years.

Toshiro Kuroki Department of Parasitology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Okayama University of Science, Okayama, Japan

Toshiro Kuroki is a professor in the Department of Parasitology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Okayama University of Science, and teaches courses on parasitology and epidemiology. He worked for 36 years in the Department of Microbiology at the Kanagawa Prefectural Institute of Public Health, studying pathogenic bacteria (Legionella, Salmonella, Neisseria, etc.) and protozoa (Cryptosporidium, Giardia, Entamoeba, etc.). He is the Secretary General of the Japanese Society of Hospital Water Hygiene and is working on solving microbial problems in the water environment of medical institutions.

Hiroki Nagai Department of Microbiology, Graduate School of Medicine, Gifu University, Gifu, Japan

Hiroki Nagai is full professor of Department of Microbiology, Graduate School of Medicine, Gifu University (Gifu, Japan). He got PhD in Microbiology in 1991, then worked as research associate at National Institute of Genetics (Mishima, Japan), and Yale School of Medicine (New Haven, US), then as associate professor of Research Institute for Microbial Diseases, Osaka University (Osaka, Japan), and is currently president of Japanese Society for Bacteriology-Chubu.

Torahiko Okubo Faculty of Health Sciences, Hokkaido University, Hokkaido, Japan

Torahiko Okubo is a lecturer at Faculty of Health Sciences, Hokkaido University, Hokkaido. His main research interest is in microbial interactions between bacteria and protozoa. His work on Legionella has included co-culture experiments with ciliates and Legionella to identify potential hosts for Legionella. He is an expert in protozoan culture and has several publications on environmental bacteria and drug-resistant bacteria.

	Kenta Watanabe Yamaguchi University, Yamaguchi, Japan
Kenta Watanabe is an assistant professor at Yamaguchi University. He has been working since 2014 for Legionella. His interest is focused on relationships between Legionella and their natural host in environment. He is using a protist host model to analyze the ecology of Legionella in the environment, or the molecular mechanisms by which they establishes a relationship with their host.

	Masahisa Watarai Yamaguchi University, Yamaguchi, Japan
Masahisa Watarai is full professor of Veterinary Public Health at the Joint Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Yamaguchi University. In the field of Legionella, his interest is focused on relationship between bacteria and natural hosts such as protists. He is also participating in the National BioResource Project (NBRP) “Paramecium”, and cooperating with the scientific utilization of Paramecium.

Hiroyuki Yamaguchi Microbiology at the Department of Medical Laboratory Science, Faculty of Health Sciences, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan

Hiroyuki Yamaguchi is a full professor of Microbiology at the Department of Medical Laboratory Science, Faculty of Health Sciences, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan. His scientific focus is on elucidating molecular mechanism of host-parasite interaction, specifically with pathogenic chlamydial infected mammalian cells, environmental chlamydial symbiotic amoebae and Legionella-infected ciliates.