Opening Address

It is a great pleasure for us to welcome all of you to the Twelfth “Science in Japan” Forum. I wish to thank all the participants joining us today in support of this forum.

Since our establishment in 1932, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, JSPS, has developed its activities by giving support to creative researches in basic science. In particular, JSPS puts emphasis on the promotion of international collaborations in science.

To this end, we have been organizing the “Science in Japan” Forums once every year for the last eleven years. We introduce cutting-edge researches being advanced in Japan.

In recent years, we have seen remarkable progress in fusion science. An international project, ITER, was launched last year.

While, stellarator projects and related researches have made significant progress.

Concerning the big accelerator projects, design of the International Linear Collider is in progress and physicists are looking forward to it’s early construction.

A high intensity proton accelerator, so called J-PARC will be completed in the next year and expected to be used in particle, nuclear and material sciences.

On the other hand, applications of synchrotron light sources and free electron laser facilities to the wide field of science gather world-wide attention.

The challenge in science policy is going to be of tremendous importance, since it shapes the future direction of science.

We are quite happy to realize the forum which devotes to these extremely important topics. We do hope the presentations and discussion in this forum will create opportunities of collaborative works in these fields of science.

Finally, I would like to extend our deepest appreciation to all the co-sponsors for their most kind co-operation and support in organizing this forum.

Thank you.