The "Science in Japan" Fora organized by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Washington Office, which seek to promote Japan-US collaboration by introducing the latest trends in Japanese scientific research, have since 1996 been held with the support of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the US Department of Energy (DOE), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The topic of this year was "Science Policy, Fusion Science and Accelerator Science".
On June 15th, the 12th "Science in Japan" Forum was held at the Hilton Crystal City in Arlington, VA.
The forum opened with remarks by Dr. Akira Masaike, Director of JSPS Washington Office, who explained the importance of the "Science in Japan" Fora and why "Science Policy, Fusion Science and Accelerator Science" were chosen as the forum's themes. Then he introduced the moderators and the chairperson.
The Fusion Science Session was moderated by Dr. Robert Goldston, Director of Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, who gave an introductory talk on the fusion science. The session proceeded with presentations by Dr. Osamu Motojima, Director General of National Institute for Fusion Science and Dr. Norbert Holtkamp, Principal Deputy Director General of ITER Organization.
Dr. Nicholas Samios, Director of RIKEN BNL Research Center moderated the Accelerator Science Session, who pointed out the importance of development of accelerators and its applications. The session proceeded with talks by Dr. Masakazu Yoshioka, Professor of KEK, Leader for Construction of J?PARC and Dr. Hiromichi Kamitsubo, Vice Chairman of Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute (JASRI) and Special Adviser of RIKEN.
The third session, the Science Policy Session, started with Dr. Machi Dilworth's introduction of speakers, who is the Director of Division of Biological Infrastructure, National Science Foundation. The session proceeded with presentations by Dr. Kaye Husbands, Science Advisor for Science of Science Policy of National Science Foundation, and Ms.Maki Kubo, Director of Administration Department of JSPS. Finally, a panel discussion on the science policy was held chaired by Dr. Dilworth. The panelists were Dr. Goldston; Dr. Husbands; Dr. Kamitsubo; and Ms. Kubo.
All of the speakers were leading experts in their respective fields. As their presentations remained broad in scope while elaborating the latest state of related research, they were of considerable interest to administrators for science policy as well as to specialists in those fields.
The forum assembled some 150 government administrators, university researchers and others, who listened to the presentations with eager attention and exchanged information on research in the subject fields with the speakers and one another with enthusiasm.
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