ISSCR 2016 San Francisco

I enjoyed the ISSCR 2016 Annual Meeting in San Francisco. The talks were great. I learned a lot. There are already several clinical trials ongoing utilizing stem cells and/or gene therapy, which is exciting. I think my talk went well too. Because there are so many great scientists doing great science, I have to think about my strength, environment, capability, and etc. to carefully choose what to do in my lab. Stem cells and genome editing are extremely competitive research fields, but I do not want spend my time doing minor things that nobody cares. As a speaker, I was invited to the President's Reception at the San Francisco City Hall. I lived in San Francisco for 4.5 years, but it was my first time to be there. It is a beautiful building. It was nice to talk to many scientists there. The food was good too. I happened to share the same coming flight with my PhD mentor, Dr. Atsushi Miyajima, so I had both my PhD mentor and postdoc mentor, Dr. Bruce Conklin, at the same meeting. It was great talk to them too. I was also able to see my friends who are Japanese or non-Japanese, or who are scientists or non-scientists. I am happy to see them doing well. I ate a cheese burger for lunch 4 days in a row, and enjoyed pizzas as well, because I had missed them since we went back to Japan. They are all good. I have been eating too much during this trip. I know that. I will try to lose my body weight in Japan.