Aquaphotomics Research Field was established on 2021.4.1 as a Research Field at the Faculty of Agriculture, Kobe University. This department is established with the purpose of providing educational and research activities in a novel science Aquaphotomics, in order to promote and deepen the investigation about the structure and functionality of water in water-based and biological systems and serve as a platform for development and launching of new technological solutions based on the aquaphotomics technology in diverse fields of application.
The department is organized under Principal Investigator and Professor Dr. Roumiana Tsenkova (Founder of Aquaphotomics and the Aquaphotomics Research Field at Kobe University), with one Associate Professor Dr. Jelena Muncan, 1 technician in charge of technical laboratory organization and maintenance, 1 IT technician in charge of IT support and website maintenance and 1 person for administrative support.
The research department offers continuous support in studying aquaphotomics for everybody interested irrespectively of their educational level. The custom research projects with the goal of reaching independence of applying aquaphotomics analysis is organized depending on the interests of a student/graduate/collaborator, and within the framework of existing research projects and activities.
The Field has 2 fully equipped laboratories located in the Graduate School of Agriculture, E367 and F512 and two offices, E254 and F313. These laboratories provide environment for aquaphotomics research activities, supported by reference measurements using standard methods. The E367 laboratory is organized for aquaphotomics research that involves cells and controlled environment (clean bench, incubators, freezer, microscopes), while F512 laboratory is organized as a spectroscopy laboratory which is equipped with spectrophotometric instruments that cover several modes of measurements (transmittance, reflectance, transflectance, attenuated total reflectance) in the range from (ultraviolet) UV, (near-infrared) NIR and (infrared) IR. Both laboratories support benchtop as well as portable spectroscopic measurements in the NIR range.
Since the Aquaphotomics covers wide range of research fields and applications, it gathers together faculty and students with various backgrounds; not only researchers from Japanese universities but also foreigners and researchers working for companies. The research activities are based on interaction among both domestic and international universities, research laboratories and companies.