Introduction

I am Shota SHIBASAKI. I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Theoretical Ecology and Evolution laboratory at the National Institute of Genetics.

I am interested in complex biological systems and how to understand, control, and utilize such systems.

For example, microbial species show complex cooperative behaviours (see my master studies), but why can such a tiny unicellular organism do this? Also, microbial communities give us some benefits such as producing energy and degrading toxic compounds. However, complex ecological and evolutionary dynamics prevent us from maximizing these benefits. Then, how can we control or stabilize the ecological and/or evolutionary dynamics of microbes while optimizing our benefits (see my Ph.D. thesis)? As a postdoc, I have expanded my research interest to larger organisms. What determines the property of food webs in rivers? How have human culture and nature interested each other?

Skills

Language

Japanese (mother tongue), English, Italian (learned 2 years in undergraduate), French*

* Don’t ask me why my French is worse than my Italian although I obtained Ph.D. in Lausanne*

Programming skills

Python 3 (most use), R, C, Matlab, Scilab (least use)

Others

LaTeX, Illustrator

Keywords

evolutionary game theory/cooperation/mathematical model/optimization/microbial communities/ food web/ ecology and culture