Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen.
It is a great honour to have the opportunity to say a few words before starting this symposium. First of all, on behalf of all members of the Advanced Science Research Center of the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute, I would like to express our great pleasure in welcoming all of you and in hosting the Third International Symposium on Advanced Science Research.
The Advanced Science Research Center was established in 1993. Since then one of the most important functions assigned to this centre has been to promote and initiate basic research activities in atomic energy and related fields, in collaboration with scientists throughout our country as well as abroad.
In view of the rapidly advancing frontiers of science and technology, and the increasing importance of international collaboration, I strongly felt that our centre should play a leading role in promoting scientific activities in a worldwide form. This is not only a give-and-take information exchange with the outside world but also we intend to promote harmony between different scientific cultures through the establishment of new programmes at our centre.
As one action for the global promotion of our research activities, we have decided to host a series of international symposia on advances in various topics in fields of our interest. This we call the 'Advance series of symposia'. The first such symposium was held on the subject of 'neutron scattering research' and the second, held in November 2001, on 'heavy element research', with great success. The present symposium is the third of this series. The size and
format of each symposium will be chosen flexibly considering the nature of its topic. However, in all cases, in addition to promoting exchange of expert insights, we would like to encourage particularly young scientists to present papers in each symposium on their new results from the frontiers of science and technology, and to help them to get an overview of fields they are
involved in.
The topic of the present symposium is 'advances in f-electron phenomena'. I will not go into detail about the importance of this field, because the Chairman of the organizing committee, Professor Russ Walstedt will tell you the outline later. Nevertheless, let me emphasize that the scientific subjects discussed at this symposium, namely the fundamental properties of f-electrons,
are playing a crucial role in understanding the exotic effects of rare earth and actinide compounds such as magnetic and multi polar ordering, quantum critical phenomena and unconventional superconductivity. These are quite fascinating topics and I expect a variety of hot discussions throughout this symposium.
Finally, I would like to thank our president, Dr S Saito, for allowing us to hold this symposium and for help with financial sponsorship. My special
gratitude goes also to the Physical Society of Japan and the Atomic Energy Society of Japan for their endorsement.
I would like to close my speech by expressing my sincere wishes for the success of the symposium and for all participants to discover new opportunities in the still growing area of research on the f-electron systems.
Thank you very much for your attention.