Masaharu Tsuji worked at the Hokkaido center, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology as a technical staff member with Dr. Tamotsu Hoshino in 2009. He was awarded the Ph.D. degree in Agriculture from Iwate University, Japan, in March 2015. In April 2015, he joined the Biology group, National Institute of Polar Research as a Project Researcher. His current research interests include mycoflora in Polar region, cold adaptation strategies for them and utilization of their potential for biotechnology. Tamotsu Hoshino received Ph.D. in fungal biotechnology from Graduate School of Agriculture, Nagoya University in 1992. He has developed ecophysiological characteristics of fungal cold adaptation from snow molds in the Arctic to Antarctica via Siberia. His research interests include cold adaptation of fungi from molecular to ecological level, speciation of fungi in cold environments and effects of climate change on cold-adapted fungi. He was a Board Member of Trustees of Mycological Society of Japan (2013-2016).