RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences Open Systems Information Science Special Team
Team Director: Kazuhiro Sakurada (Ph.D.)
Research Summary

The Open Systems Information Science Special Team is conducting interdisciplinary research that integrates medicine, experimental biology, psychology, information science, and physics to realize preventive medicine based on the root causes of disease.
To address the root causes of disease, we have developed new inference frameworks that focus on aging and interoception, interpret the life course as a process, and enable prediction. One such framework is the development of organism mechanics, which interprets and predicts changes in biological function as movements in a state space and as interactions within a message field.
Main Research Fields
- Biological Sciences
Related Research Fields
- Informatics
- Complex Systems
- Mathematical & Physical Sciences
- Medicine, Dentistry & Pharmacy
Keywords
- Organism mechanics, multilevel problems, open system thermodynamics, maximum entropy production principle
Selected Publications
- 1.
Sakurada K, Ishikawa T, Oba J, Kuno M, Okano Y, Sakamaki T, Tamura T.
"Medical AI and AI for Medical Sciences"
JMA J. 8(1):26-37 (2025). - 2.
Sakurada K and Ishikawa T
"Synthesis of causal and surrogate models by non-equilibrium thermodynamics in biological systems."
Sci Rep. 14(1):1001 (2024). - 3.
Masaki H, Ishikawa T, Takahashi S, Okumura M, Sakai N, Haga M, Kominami K, Migita H, McDonald F, Shimada F, Sakurada K.
"Heterogeneity of pluripotent marker gene expression in colonies generated in human iPS cell induction culture"
Stem Cell Res. 1(2):105-15 (2008) - 4.
Arata Y., Shiga I., Ikeda Y., Jurica P., Kimura H., Kiyono K., Sako Y.
"Insulin signaling shapes fractal scaling of C. elegans behavior"
Scientific Reports 12(1) 10481 (2022) - 5.
Arata Y., Takagi H., Sako Y., Sawa H
"Power law relationship between cell cycle duration and cell volume in the early embryonic development of Caenorhabditis elegans."
Frontiers in physiology 5 529-529 (2014) - 6.
Takeichi H, Taniguchi K, Shigemasu H.
"Visual and haptic cues in processing occlusion."
Frontiers in psychology 14 1082557 (2023) - 7.
Suzuki W, Hiyama A, Ichinohe N, Yamashita W, Seno T, Takeichi H.
"Visualization by P-flow: gradient- and feature-based optical flow and vector fields extracted from image analysis."
J Opt Soc Am A Opt Image Sci Vis 37(12) 1958-1964 (2020) - 8.
Suzuki W, Ichinohe N, Tani T, Hayami T, Miyakawa N, Watanabe S, Takeichi H.
"Novel method of extracting motion from natural movies."
J Neurosci Methods 291 51–60 (2017)
Publications
Lab Members
Principal investigator
- Kazuhiro Sakurada
- Team Director
Core members
- Yukinobu Arata
- Senior Research Scientist
- Hiroshige Takeichi
- Special Contracted Technical Scientist
Contact Information
W506 West Research Building
1-7-22 Suehiro-cho, Tsurumi-ku, Yokohama City, Kanagawa,
230-0045, Japan
Email: pmsp-web@ml.riken.jp