It is thanks to the profound understanding of the importance of brain science by the Japanese government and the RIKEN administrators and to the general expectations for its development in Japanese society that a research center on such a large scale has been realized. Deep in my heart I'm hoping that the BSI continues to progress smoothly in the future and that it will continue to deploy outstanding efforts in this field.
The BSI aims at becoming a center of excellence in the field of brain science, that will achieve remarkable results in leading the world. Accordingly it has set up three major research fields which are "Understanding the Brain", "Protecting the Brain" and "Creating the Brain" , and seeks to emphasize interdisciplinary collaboration between them. It will maintain the critical concentration of researchers that is deemed indispensable for maintaining a high research activity, and will make the best possible efforts to maintain the human supply while stressing the open concepts of younger researchers. It will arrange attractive research environments that will appeal to the many foreign researchers as an internationally open research center. It will recognize the importance of technical staff, endeavor to maintain its technical levels and prepare infrastructures to facilitate research.
We have special plans to vigorously promote the preparation of these research environment activities. The first of these is the Advanced Technology Development Center which has already been opened in order to devote itself to enable technological innovation to advance in close association with scientific discoveries. This center is dedicated to the creation of new technologies and based on these attempts to improve the level of technological achievement of the entire BSI. An Information Center has also been established to plan and promote the distribution of information through publications and conferences. In addition, this center will also serve as a base for the creation and management of the brain science databases that will become more important in the future.
Based on close cooperation with research organizations inside and outside Japan, we will make every effort for the BSI to achieve worldwide recognition as an important and distinguished element in the broad, interdisciplinary, international network of brain science. We will implement a research environment allowing any researcher coming from anywhere in the world to begin research from the very next day after he or she arrives at BSI. We will also endeavor to disseminate brain science in society and to quickly feed back to society the new results of research. However, effective and sustained support from society in general is necessary so that BSI can make the requisite progress to achieve these targets. We are therefore hoping for strong support from people in various fields of society.
