© PAUL SIMCOCKShingo Kajimura is a man who follows his passions, both to new fishing holes and to new scientific questions. Growing up in the Tokyo suburbs, he felt drawn to the natural world from a young age. “I went fishing pretty much every day when I was a kid,” he says.
As an undergraduate at the University of Tokyo, Kajimura paired his interest in nature with biochemistry. “I was really fascinated by this idea that different animals have biochemical mechanisms that allow them to adapt to extreme environments,” he says. After earning his bachelor’s degree, Kajimura received a government fellowship to pursue graduate research in the United States while enrolled at the University of Tokyo, and he packed his bags for Hawaii.
In Gordon Grau’s lab at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, Kajimura studied survival and prolactin production in tilapia subjected to varying salt concentrations. Andre Seale, then a PhD student in Grau’s lab, recalls Kajimura’s dedication: “He was always very engaged, in all of the molecular work in particular. He was very driven.”
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