Keisuke Kubota, who is a 2nd year doctoral student at ELSI (School of Life Science and Technology, Department of Life Science and Technology, Life Science and Technology Course of Science Tokyo), won the Poster Award at the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Japan Society for Microbial Resources and Systematics, held from September 2 to 4, 2026. He is supervised by ELSI’s Associate Professor Shawn Erin McGlynn.

The Poster Award is presented to the two most outstanding poster presentations selected from among those presented at this conference. Kubota’s poster presentation title was ‘Characterization and Phylogenetic Analysis of Dominant Chemosynthetic Bacteria Isolated from Hot Spring Microbial Mats*.’
 
‘I am truly honored to have received the Poster Award. My research aims to elucidate the origin of life and the mechanisms underlying the evolution of life from a microbiological perspective. More than 99% of microorganisms on Earth are thought to remain undiscovered and uncultivated. Even in the high-temperature terrestrial hot springs investigated by our research group, microorganisms had remained uncultivated for approximately 20 years after their initial discovery. Microbial cultivation still relies heavily on classical and labor-intensive approaches. I myself have conducted more than 1,000 microbial cultivation experiments, working day and night. Most of them have ended in failure, but whenever I obtain a result that eventually leads to a finding like the one presented here, I feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment—much like the satisfaction of scoring a goal in an important soccer match.

When I first began this research, things did not go smoothly right away. However, I believe that receiving this award has been made possible thanks to the patient and generous guidance and support of my supervisor, collaborators, and everyone at ELSI. I sincerely appreciate all of their support. I will continue to dedicate myself to advancing this research further,’ commented Kubota.

*This poster presentation was co-authored by Shigeru Kawai, Specially Appointed Assistant Professor (Toyohashi University of Technology); Katsumi Matsuura, Research Fellow (Institute of Science Tokyo); and Associate Professor Shawn Erin McGlynn.