Immerse yourself

Destination Kyoto

Kyoto embodies 1,200 years of Japanese history and tradition as capital of Japan. 17 UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Sites are situated in a cityscape dominated by 2000 temples and shrines.

The friendly city of 1.5 million people offers endless opportunities for your congress to gain meaningful hands-on experience of rich Japanese culture through tea ceremony, sake brewing, kimono wearing, swordsmanship and more. Japan is renowned for its safety and the compactness of Kyoto makes for wonderful strolling during free time.

Things to do

Tea Ceremony

Time out to relax and reflect

Kimono Wearing

Completely enveloped in Japan

Calligraphy

Learn the ancient art

Japanese Pottery

Enjoy a chance to learn from a master

Meeting Maiko

Meet Geisha only in Kyoto

Zen Meditation

Find your inner peace

Things to see

Shogunzuka Seiryuden

A large wooden structure built in 1913 in front of the Kitano-Tenmangu Shrine to celebrate the enthronement of Emperor Taisho. Acknowledging its historical and cultural values, Shorenin Temple decided to relocate and rebuild the structure on the summit of Kyoto’s eastern mountains. Here it houses the national treasure Ao Fudo, a blue-colored depiction of a Buddhist deity. The vast wooden terrace is a popular location to enjoy breathtaking panoramas of the city.

Daigoji Temple

The Daigoji Temple UNESCO World Heritage Site is the head temple of the Daigo School of the Buddhist Shingon sect, built in 874 in the south east of Kyoto City. Its five story pagoda is the oldest wooden structure in Kyoto. Its Reihokan Hall houses breathtaking Buddhist statuary and some of the temple’s approximately 150,000 other national treasures and important cultural properties. The temple is surrounded by the cherry trees of the Kenjinrin-en garden and is nearby the Sanboin gardens and the Ugetsu Chaya Onshikan, a building that was originally part of the Imperial Palace.

Kenninji Temple

Kenninji Temple, located in Gion, is Kyoto’s oldest Zen temple, founded in 1202 by the Zen master Eisai. Soutatsu Tawaraya’s gold leaf covered folding screens depicting the Wind and Thunder Gods are national treasures. The great ceiling painting of the twin dragons in the temple’s hall was completed over a period of two years by and was installed in 2002 in commemoration of the 800 year anniversary of the founding of the temple.

Fushimi Inari-Taisha

With seemingly endless arcades of vermilion torii (shrine gates) spread across a thickly wooded mountain, this vast shrine complex is a world unto its own. It is, quite simply, one of the most impressive and memorable sights in all of Kyoto. The entire complex, consisting of five shrines, sprawls across the wooded slopes of Inari-san. A pathway wanders 4km up the mountain and is lined with dozens of atmospheric sub-shrines.

Atulya Deodhar

Oregon Health & Science University

United States

Atul A. Deodhar, MD, is Professor of Medicine and Medical Director of rheumatology clinics at the Division of Arthritis & Rheumatic Diseases in Oregon Health & Science University, Portland. He is Board Certified in Internal Medicine and Rheumatology; and is a fellow of the American College of Rheumatology, and also American College of Physicians.

Dr. Deodhar is a past-chair of SPARTAN (Spondyloarthritis Research and Treatment Network), an organization of North American Rheumatologists dedicated to education and research in the field of axial spondyloarthritis. He serves on the Steering Committee of GRAPPA (Group for the Research and Assessment of Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis). He served on the American College of Rheumatology’s (ACR) treatment guidelines sub-committee, and as the associate editor of the Advanced Rheumatology Course by Association of Health Professionals in Rheumatology (ARHP). He has served the ACR in various other capacities as a vice chair of the annual meeting planning committee, member of the peripheral MRI task force, Association of Rheumatology Health Professionals (ARHP) nominating committee and developer of the ARHP online advanced rheumatology course. Dr. Deodhar serves on the Rheumatology Board of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM)

Dr. Deodhar is the Editor-in-Chief of Best Practice and Research Clinical Rheumatology, and has been a guest editor for Current Opinion in Rheumatology. He is a reviewer for the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Arthritis & Rheumatology, Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, Annals of Internal Medicine, among several other journals. His research interests are axial spondyloarthritis, and psoriatic arthritis. He has authored 3 books, over 250 peer-reviewed articles; several book chapters, and editorials. Dr. Deodhar has been He has been a principal or co-investigator in more than 100 clinical trials, mostly focused on therapies for ankylosing spondylitis, psoriatic arthritis, and rheumatoid arthritis.

He completed his fellowship in rheumatology at Oregon Health & Science University, and before that, a research fellowship in rheumatology at the Royal Cornwall Hospital, Truro, England. He completed his residency in internal medicine and geriatrics at the Royal Cornwall Hospital, Truro, as well as in the Sassoon General Hospital and King Edward Memorial Hospital, Pune, India. He received his MBBS and MD degrees from the University of Pune, India; and the MRCP from the Royal College of Physicians, London, England.

Md Mujibur Rahman

Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University

Bangladesh

Professor Md. Mujibur Rahman is a renowned Internist recently joined to BSMMU as the Professor of Internal Medicine after serving Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) as professor and Head of Medicine. Under the leadership of Prof Rahman, the COVID-19 unit of DMCH was the largest dedicated COVID-19 hospital in the country. He and his team ran different research project in DMCH including several clinical trials. He is also one of the investigators of the SOLIDARITY trial of WHO in Bangladesh. He served different public medical college as faculty and proved himself as a great teacher, researcher and a humanely physician.

For his deep interest in Rheumatology, he used to run a Rheumatology Clinic which is giving services to hundreds of patients each week. He was the Principal Investigator of ShSMCH site for an international drug trial on Lupus Nephritis. He was the principal investigator of first STEP-wise survey of NCDs risk factors in Bangladesh in 2010. He took leadership in managing Dengue and Chikungunya outbreak in Dhaka during the time of crises.

Prof. Md. Mujibur Rahman was born in Gazipur, near Dhaka, in the year 1961. He has a very brilliant academic career as well as professional one. He did his HSC in 1977 and HSC in 1979 with distinction and stood 11th position in the combined merit list of Dhaka Board from Dhaka Residential Model school and college. He graduated from Dhaka Medical College in the year 1985 and joined the Government service of and completed FCPS in Internal Medicine in 1992 and MD Internal Medicine in 2001. He was awarded with International Fellowship Exchange Program of American College of Physicians as a first Bangladeshi Physician and he worked in rheumatology department of Massachusetts General Hospital in the year 2006.
Along with taking care of admitted patients, he is extensively involved in teaching and training programs. In his colourful professional career of 35 years, he has an enormous number of students and followers in home and abroad. He has over 60 publications in national and international journals and he presented over 50 papers in national and international seminars.

He is currently elected councillor of BCPS and was Honorary Controller of Examinations of the Bangladesh College of Physicians and Surgeons (BCPS), which is the number one postgraduate institute of the country.
Currently Prof. Md. Mujibur Rahman is the vice president of Bangladesh Rheumatology Society, Bangladesh Society of Medicine and Association of Physicians of Bangladesh. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. He is the editorial board member of Bangladesh Journal of Medicine. He is trying to engage himself in improvement in the medical education, physicians’ training and research in Bangladesh.

Jeffrey Curtis

UAB Division of Clinical Immunology & Rheumatology

United States

Jeffrey R. Curtis, MD, MS MPH
Marguerite Jones Harbert – Gene V Ball, MD Professor of Medicine
Co-Director, UAB PharmacoEpidEmiology, and phaRmcoeconomics (PEER) Unit
Director, UAB Musculoskeletal Digital Health and Technology Laboratory
University of Alabama at Birmingham, Division of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology

Dr. Jeffrey Curtis is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). Dr. Curtis received a Medical Degree (MD) and a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree from Oregon Health & Sciences University in Portland, OR. He subsequently completed a residency in internal medicine at Oregon Health & Science University and a fellowship in rheumatology at UAB. He completed a graduate program in Clinical Informatics at Stanford University and received his Master of Science (MS) degree in epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. He is board certified in both rheumatology and clinical informatics.

Dr. Curtis holds the Harbert-Ball Endowed Professorship in Rheumatology and Immunology at UAB. His major research emphasis is on evaluating the safety and comparative effectiveness of medications for rheumatic diseases. He also conducts both investigator-initiated and industry-sponsored clinical trials in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and psoriatic arthritis (PsA), including large pragmatic trials. He is the Co-Director of the UAB Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics Research (PEER) Unit. PEER uses multiple large and linked data sources to study comparative effectiveness questions across multiple chronic diseases. The data sources he routinely uses include national electronic health record, health plan claims (e.g. Medicare, commercial insurance), traditional registry, patient reported outcomes, mobile device, wearable technology; he has done numerous projects that link these disparate data sources together. In 2012, he was awarded the Henry Kunkel Young Investigator Award by the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) and was accepted into the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) in 2016. In 2015, Dr. Curtis was appointed as a member to the FDA Arthritis Advisory Committee, and also the CDC’s ACIP Herpes Zoster Working Group.

The evaluation of the efficacy, comparative effectiveness, and safety of the medications, devices, and other interventions (e.g. vaccines) used in the care of rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, and spondyloarthritis patients. He served on the Core Expert Panel for the ACR’s 2008, 2012, and 2015 Recommendations for the Use of Nonbiologic and Biologic Disease Modifying Antirheumatic Drugs in RA. He was the Deputy Director for a collaborative project between the FDA, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and a number of academic centers studying the safety of biologic agents using multiple, pooled national data sources. He has served as the co-PI of the UAB Coordinating Center of the American College of Rheumatology’s (ACR) electronic health record-based registry Rheumatology Informatics System for Effectiveness (RISE) registry. RISE aggregates and normalizes EHR data from more than 3 million rheumatology patients, with data contributed by more than 1,000 rheumatology providers. He is the Co-PI of the mobile health-based, PCORI-funded Patient Powered Research Network “ArthritisPower” research registry, focused on RA, psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, and Spondyloarthritis that has enrolled more than 30,000 patients.

Dr. Curtis also studies risk factors for and outcomes of osteoporosis. He was a member of the ACR’s task force to update recommendations for the management of glucocorticoid induced osteoporosis (GIOP). He served on the ASBMR Task Force on Atypical Subtrochanteric and Diaphyseal Fractures. In 2020, he was asked to serve on the ACR’s Vaccine Guideline Task Force, and he also leads the separate ACR COVID Vaccine Guidance Task Force.