On October 26th 2013, Dr. Shingo Kato, Special Postdoctoral Researcher and Dr. Moriya Ohkuma, Head of the Microbe Division (JCM), have won the JSE Best Poster Award for their presentation "Distribution, function and community composition of prokaryotes in sub-seafloor massive sulfide deposits".

The award is given to those who gave a good presentation in the annual conference of the Japan Society for Extremophiles (Japanese). It is given to several members every year.