Kentaro Shimizu
Table of contents
Research interests
Molecular basis of biodiversity, speciation by genome duplication (polyploidy), language evolution, evolution of mating systems and self-incompatibility, evolutionary and ecological genomics for predicting evolutionary and plastic responses in changing environments. The study species include Arabidopsis relatives as model species, wheat as a crop species, tropical trees as environmentally relevant species, and human beings. To study them, new bioinformatic tools (e.g. HomeoRoq for polyploid RNA-seq), machine learning tools (e.g. PlantServation for field plant images) and database (e.g., GeLaTo, GEnes and LAnguages TOgether) are developed.
CV
Education and professional positions
| 2024 - present | Director of the Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Switzerland |
| 2021 - 2024 | Co-director of the University Research Priority Program of Evolution in Action, link |
| 2019 - present | Full Professor, Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Switzerland |
| 2016 - present | Director of PhD Program in Evolutionary Biology |
| 2015 | NISTEP Award (Award for nice step researchers) from the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan |
| 2015 - present | Guest Professor at the Kihara Institute for Biological Research, Yokohama City University, Japan |
| 2015 | Visiting Professor at the Center for Ecological Research, Kyoto University, Japan |
| 2015 - present | Swiss representative of the Multinational Arabidopsis Steering Committee |
| 2011 - 2018 | Associate Professor, Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Switzerland |
| 2006 - 2011 | Assistant Professor, Institute of Plant Biology, University of Zurich, Switzerland |
| 2003 - 2006 | Research Scholar, Department of Genetics, North Carolina State University, USA |
| 2002 - 2003 | Postdoctoral fellow, Kyoto University, Japan |
| 1997 - 2002 | Graduate studies (Ph.D.) in Biology, Kyoto University, Japan |
| 1993 - 1997 | Undergraduate studies (B.S.) in Biology, Kyoto University, Japan |
Selected publications
See complete publication list on Google Scholar.
- Reiko Akiyama, Takao Goto, Toshiaki Tameshige, Jiro Sugisaka, Ken Kuroki, Jianqiang Sun, Junichi Akita, Masaomi Hatakeyama, Hiroshi Kudoh, Tanaka Kenta, Aya Tonouchi, Yuki Shimahara, Jun Sese, Natsumaro Kutsuna, Rie Shimizu-Inatsugi, Kentaro K. Shimizu. (2023) Seasonal pigment fluctuation in diploid and polyploid Arabidopsis revealed by machine learning-based phenotyping method PlantServation. Nature Communications.DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-41260-3
UZH News English German - Yasuhiro Sato, Rie Shimizu-Inatsugi, Kazuya Takeda, Bernhard Schmid, Atsushi J. Nagano, Kentaro K. Shimizu. (2024) Reducing herbivory in mixed planting by genomic prediction of neighbor effects in the field. Nature Communications.DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-52374-7
UZH News English German - Barbieri C., Blasi DE., Arango-Isaza E., Sotiropoulos AG., Hammarström H., Wichmann S., Greenhill SJ., Gray RD., Forkel R., Bickel B., Shimizu KK. (2022). A global analysis of matches and mismatches between human genetic and linguistic histories. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 119:47. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2122084119
UZH News English German - Walkowiak S., et al. (2020). Spotlight on global wheat genome variation and impact for modern breeding. Nature 588; 277-283. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2961-x
UZH News English, German - Tsuchimatsu T., Suwabe K., Shimizu-Inatsugi R., Isokawa S., Pavilidis P., Städler T., Suzuki G., Takayama S., Watanabe M., Shimizu KK. (2010). Evolution of self-compatibility in Arabidopsis by a mutation in the male specificity gene. Nature, 464, 1342-1346. DOI: 10.1038/nature08927
