For this year’s first Find-Your-Role-Model Session (60th overall), we invited Prof. Keiichi Hosaka, who is a graduate of TMDU, an former assistant professor of TMDU (until this March), and now a professor and chair of Regenerative Dental Medicine, Tokushima University Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.

One of the impressive points was that when Prof. Hosaka makes a decision in his career, including his decision to apply for the professor selection, he consults others for their opinions, thinks it over, and then makes a decision. With this method he has had no regrets about any of his decisions. Moreover, he said that he decided to go into research because he was impressed by his instructors at university. Also, since he became interested in foreign countries, he decided to study at the Medical College of Georgia in the United States while in graduate school.

Prof. Hosaka talked about what he has learned in his career. He has learned, and kept in mind, that “The important things are to accept any job offer and do your best, and to never do nothing.” It is very important advice for those of us who are building our careers.

Also, he explained that the important things for making a career are sufficient achievements and external funding. He could become a professor because he kept doing his best on every task and did not refuse work that was requested of him. By this, we realized that slow and steady wins the race.

He is not satisfied with only the position of professor but is continuing his efforts to improve the field of dentistry as much as he can. There were a lot of things that we could learn about decision making by listening to his career path. All participants were very inspired by his appearance and advice, and received energy from his efforts.