Tavelmout Corporation was selected as a noteworthy startup［HOTTOPICS vol.56］

◯Nur-Ezan Mohamed（Scientific Specialist, Business Development Division, Chitose Agriculture Initiative）：

Chitose Agriculture Initiative (CAI) participated in the open house charity event organized by The Japanese Association, Singapore (JA) on the 24th November 2018. The event attracted more than 1,000 people, both Japanese expats and non-Japanese. This is the second time for me to join this event. It reminded me of my time in Japan; observing visitors walking around in their Yukatas while enjoying street food like Takoyaki and Yakisoba. There was even a live tuna cutting session.

Due to the popularity of our JA booth last year, CAI was invited again as a vendor for our Chitose strawberries and tomatoes from Cameron Highlands as well as kaki-ichigo(100% shaved frozen strawberries). We were excited to be able to promote CAI produce; explaining to them our ethical sustainable practices of farming and our unique harvesting method of picking strawberries and tomatoes only at their most ripen state. Many people are surprised that we are able to grow high quality and safe Japanese produce in Cameron Highlands, since in the recent years the area had received bad press for their heavy usage of pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Our kaki-ichigo was very popular with both the young and old. Everyone looked happy to indulge in healthy shaved dessert made from 100% frozen strawberries. It was a fascinating sight for me to see children dragging their parents to the booth to get them a cup as well as customers happily taking selfies with our kaki ichigo. As food waste is a huge problem globally, we were able to explain to our customers that our kaki ichigo is made from strawberries which could have gone to waste just because they are not pretty enough for the supermarket shelves.

We are pleased to have sold out everything during the event and donated part of the sales proceeds to charity organisations selected by JA. We look forward to participate again next year!

◯Norichika Ogata (Representative, Nihon BioData Corporation):

Impressions of the conference

Since it was my first time participating in a conference for electrical and electronic engineers, and I did not have any acquaintances, I had to make opportunities to talk with other participants in order to make the conference more meaningful. In other words, letting people know about my research, think about scientific validity, point out mistakes or give a hypothesis to be verified. In addition to talking to other researchers at the welcome reception, I invented something to gain attention to my poster. It’s own poster award. Floral decoration is sometimes put on a student’s poster as a form of prize at academic conferences in Japan. I bought the decoration at a local stationery shop for 200 yen and put it on the top right of the poster. It was a success. My poster was reviewed by the four reviewers and 13 participants. It turned out that the validity of the scientific explanation regarding the electrical microscope was quite high, which was very meaningful. Now, we can develop the electrical microscope business with confidence. The conference venue was a very beautiful resort hotel and I was able to spend time at the sauna and play water polo at the swimming pool.

Preparation for the conference

After receiving notification of acceptance, I started to prepare for visa and vaccines. I applied and received the visa at the Indian Embassy in Kudanshita, so I used this opportunity to go to the Biryani restaurant near the Embassy and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. I could see the exhibition, ”Awakenings: Art in Society in Asia”. I recommend it if you are interested in the “student power movement” in Japan’s history. It opens until December 24. I received eleven injections for hepatitis A, hepatitis B, tetanus, Japanese encephalitis, rabies and typhus on both arms over two days. Afterwards I was able to prepare for the conference very smoothly until I got on the flight, but a person who was sitting next of me on the plane told me, “Your flight ticket is strange”. I was planning to simply transit at Shanghai and go to New Delhi, but actually there are two international airports in Shanghai and I had to move between these two airports although they are very far apart from each other.  Because they could not speak English at the airport information desk, I checked the sign written in Chinese characters and tried to go to the other airport by taking the subway. The subway was easier than I thought, but I had three troubles. The first one was a limitation of transfer. Since some stations allow us to transfer by the transport card like Suica but not paper tickets, I had to get on and off a few times to change to the intended line. Secondly, I missed the first train because I had to queue up to wait for a baggage inspection at the ticket gate. That was long queue because the inspection started at a time just before the first train came. The third one was transferring. When the door of the train opened, both people getting on and off the train were standing at the front of the door and did not give way, so as soon as the door opened, they pushed against each other and I heard the roar. Next time, I want to ride a linear motor car. In India, I did not have any trouble, and enjoyed 16 yen spiced tea and 30 yen curry.

Experience of participation

It was my first time attending an academic meeting for electronics following the meeting for information science (* 1). In these fields, peer review by paper submission is carried out before the presentation at the conferences; we are unaccustomed these reviewed presentation style since it is not our specialty. We are foremost biologists and not confident in other scientific fields such as information science and electronics. It is an issue for us. Last year, a symbolic incident happened in the field of biotech start-up. A start-up came crashing down to earth due to a lack in scientific validity; Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes’s Silicon Valley biotech start-up had racked up a $9 billion valuation with its big vision to test for a number of conditions from just a small sample of blood. It was also taken up by Nature Biotechnology (* 2). The promotion of business development without any sharing of data to the scientific community and submitting the document on the premise of peer review are considered to be risks for both business operators and investors. Prior to that, we should eliminate the possibility that we might exaggerate their interpretations. Therefore, in order to clarify the scientific validity of the device we developed and the discovery based on it, we had submitted a paper to the conference presided by IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers). After being reviewed by the four experts, we decided to gather challenges and issues to verify at the conference venue.

※1. ICIC2017, Liverpool, UK [Best Paper Award] https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63312-1_46
※2. After Theranos, Emily Waltz, nature biotechnology https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3761