RIKEN Environmental Report 2009

President’s Fund Workshops
Realizing RIKEN’s potential through collaboration among research institutions

Research on Energy, Food and the Environment is now mainstream

‘The 14th President’s Fund Workshop’ was held on March 15th and 16th, 2009 at Shonan Village )(Hayama-cho, Kanagawa prefecture). The theme was ‘What is the role of science in building a sustainable society – Imagining the future to promoting research on Energy, Food and the Environment’. Using the Workshops as a springboard, RIKEN is extending the limits of science by cutting across the traditional boundaries of research in a process we call ‘Moving from individual knowledge to RIKEN knowledge’.

The Workshops are in-house events and since FY 2007, there have been six or seven Workshops every year. The theme of a Workshop is chosen by our management team, based on suggestions from the researchers, survey results and the opinions of external experts (for details, see below). The Workshops so far have dealt with topics such as the creation of drugs, use of supercomputers as research infrastructure and construction of an integrated database for life science.

The beginning of the discussion on ‘Energy, Food and the Environment’ goes back to FY 2007, during which there were several discussions at the RIKEN Science Council where one of the topics was how RIKEN should contribute to the field of energy and the environment. At the 54th Research Priority Committee in June 2008, under the title ‘The present situation and future challenge of basic research on energy and the environment’, the efforts of the Advanced Science Institute and the Plant Science Center, the two most active in this area in the whole of RIKEN, were introduced, and further discussions regarding future issues were held. At the same conference, a proposal was announced to bring this topic to the President’s Fund Workshop to deepen the discussion.

These moves coincided with the G8 Hokkaido Toyako Summit in July 2008 and the Green New Deal promoted by President Obama, inaugurated in January 2009. With the rising international awareness of global environmental problems as well as the worsening of the global economy, making progress on the reduction of CO2 and focusing on clean energy industries became a very important topic.

At the Johannesburg Summit, Kofi Annan, the U.N. Secretary General at the time, pointed out that the most pressing issues for humanity to solve at present and in the near future are WEHAB + P, which is Water, Energy, Health, Agriculture, Biodiversity and Poverty. We at RIKEN think that it is necessary to integrate the vast amount of knowledge from basic research in the field of natural science in order for science and technology to help in solving these issues. Research on energy, food and the environment occupies a large part of WEHAB + P and will be one of RIKEN’s main concerns in future.

Two day events created new collaborations and fields of studies (‘Creating RIKEN knowledge’)

Since it was the first attempt in this particular area, our 14th Workshop aimed to: 1. Take a bird’s eye view and identify research trends regarding energy, food and the environment within our organization, 2. Explore RIKEN’s overall direction of research, anticipating how society may appear in 2030 and 2050.

A total of 57 RIKEN researchers as well as experts from the government and other enterprises participated in the two day Workshop with 30 lectures followed by lively discussions. The event was successful with comments from the participants such as ‘It was good to understand the organization-wide efforts in this field, hearing directly from the researchers in various disciplines’ and ‘With people getting to know each other we can expect a ripple effect, in this case a new collaboration between traditionally divided fields’.

In order to explore the theme ‘Energy, Food and the Environment ’ in a more concrete,and strategic manner, we have been talking to the parties involved, such as participants of the Workshop, and is now in the process of prioritizing the agenda. We are planning to start research programs on energy and the environment, aiming to provide applicable and innovative technologies through collaboration, not only among RIKEN laboratories but also with other research organizations and industries.