Detailed profile of Professor Horiuchi, please click here.

Even in the 21st century, the emergence of zoonoses, such as influenza, prion diseases, SARS, Ebola hemorrhagic fever, infection of multi-drug resistant mycobacterium, is a big thread to society. We have also realized that transboundary animal infectious diseases, such as foot-and-mouth disease, cause tremendous economic loss and threaten a supply of animal proteins once it occurs. There is no border in the emergence of outbreak of infectious diseases. To protect health of human and animals and as well as economic loss from zoonoses and newly and re-emerging infectious diseases and to ease society's fears against infectious diseases, we need to foster human resources who will play pivotal roles in the control of zoonoses with advanced knowledge and skills on infectious diseases as well as a global and holistic viewpoint to gain an overall picture of the problems as a whole.

In addition to biohazards, hazardous chemicals discharged into environment from the production activities of humans, which includes poisonous metals such as mercury, cadmium and lead, pollutants such as DDT, PCB and dioxin, and emerging pollutants that are known to have caused global-scale contamination, threaten the health of humans and animals.

We have already learnt that health problems by infectious agents and hazardous chemical often appear first at the human-animal interface and then recognize as outbreak after gradually spreading.

"One World One Health" concept, in the other words, the integrity and soundness on the earth, can be ensured only by maintaining the health of humans and animals including companion, production, and captive animals, and wildlife. Since maintenance of the soundness of life environment is the most important mission of veterinary science, contribution of veterinary science is strongly requested to adopt "One Health" approach all over the world. To respond society's demands, in the Program for Leading Graduate Schools "Fostering Global Leader in Veterinary Science for Contributing to One Health" (selected in the academic year 2011, by Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology [MEXT], Japan), we reinforce toward fostering Ph.D. who are capable of managing control measures against zoonoses and/or hazardous chemicals and can take the leadership toward ensuring "One Health" in international scene, as professional/expert of veterinary science.

To achieve this, the Program for Leading Graduate Schools provides a variety of programs and systems to graduate course students as enumerated below, and concentrates on fostering Ph.D. as a professional/expert with practical competency, through fostering and encouraging students' international sense, awareness of their responsibility as experts, identity and independency, and a holistic viewpoint with inter-disciplined sense.

Postgraduates will establish a basis of their profession through the research activities in completing Ph.D. thesis and they of course have to make a lot of effort to complete their thesis. However, in addition to the research environment, our program provides opportunities to foster well-balanced international sense and have a variety of experiences. Experiences in the postgraduate course lay the foundation of the identity as professional and cosmopolitan, and therefore, accumulation of experiences gives a basis of proper judgment with subjective confidence. We are waiting for your admission through preparing opportunities to cultivate a holistic viewpoint and inter-disciplined thought and academic ambiance to broaden a variety of experiences.