About 120 second-year students from the Kawasaki High School Affiliated Junior High School were accompanied by 6 teachers on a visit to the Tonomachi King Skyfront.
The morning began with an overview of King Skyfront at the Kawasaki Life Science & Environment Research Center (LiSE). Afterwards, as part of a second overview of the facilities featured on the tour, the administrative director Mr. Suzuki gave a presentation of the Tonomachi Town Campus through slides and videos.
In the afternoon, the visitors divided into 3 groups, and went on a tour of one of 3 facilities--the Innovation Center of NanoMedicine (iCONM), the Central Institute for Experimental Animals, and the Tonomachi Town Campus--with class 3 of the second-year students visiting our campus. At the lab of Professor Masaya Nakamura (Department of Orthopedic Surgery, School of Medicine) on the third floor, they got to see HAL (Hybrid Assistive Limb), a robotic suit developed by Cyberdyne Inc. Under the care of Mr. Sawada, one of the researchers at the lab, a male student actually got to experience how intentions to bend the arm are communicated from the brain to HAL through electrodes that were attached to his arms.
Afterwards, the group moved to the fourth-floor seminar room where Mr. Suzuki explained the details of the research taking place in the lab on the third floor. As there was a press conference on the start of clinical research using iPS cells a few days earlier at our campus, it was possible to discuss the very latest activities with the students.
After the students stopped by at the Kawasaki King Skyfront Management Center on the first floor, a question and answer session was held in the large conference room in LiSE. Many questions were asked, through which the high level of interest among the students could be discerned.