Research Administrator

Overview

Research Administrator (RA) is considered to be a special staff, who is not directly an investigator of a particular research but has an expertise in research planning and management with a capability of coordination and integration of various aspects of a project.

Some universities has a well-developed University RA (URA) system supported in part by the project by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) "Development of the system to train and recruit RA", which defines URA as "the university personnel who, together with the researchers (but from a standpoint distinct from the researchers), support the promotion of the research activities, planning and management and of the application and use of the research results (not merely offering a clerical and regulatory work related to the research).  For example, URA work may include research planning with the researchers, checking the status of the legal and other regulations, proposal and negotiation of the research plan, accounting, financial and resource management of the projects, progress management, acquisition and promotion of utilization of intellectual properties and other research outputs. 

Similar to each research field, the research supporting functions are also increasingly diversified, highly specialized and required in the various stages of the research, ranging from the idea generation to the transfer to the industry.  In particular, it is critical for a large scale project to have the staff who are specialized in the research support and have a broad perspective, coordination and communication capabilities among the multiple departments and professionals, so that the project is planned, funded and managed as a well-integrated body, and its research results are properly communicated and transferred to the medical and health application.

"RA" is in the center of the name of the CRAS and constitutes the core of its concept.  However, RA in NCC is still in the developing phase, as we keep exploring the system and career path, which are highly optimized to our institute, while we can learn a lot from URA.  RA continues to be one of the top agenda of the CRAS as a whole, and we would like to find and train the best people.

• Kazunori Aoki, Kazuhiko Aoyagi and Izumi Hayama (Main appointment: Research Institute)
• Katsuya Tsuchihara (Main appointment: EPOC (Exploratory Oncology Research and Clinical Trial Center))
• Genta Ohno (Main appointment: Research Alliance and Intellectual Property Section, CRAS)