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It was the first group in BSI to be evaluated by a Research Review Committee, which was comprised of 9 international experts, 6 from abroad and 3 from Japan; Prof. Michael A. Arbib, from the University of Southern California (the Chairman of the committee,) Prof. Shimon Ullman, from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Prof. Werner von Seelen from Ruhr-University, Prof. Tomaso Poggio, from MIT, Prof. & chairman Michael P. Stryker, from University of California, San Francisco, Prof. Klaus Obermayer, Technical University of Berlin, Mitsuo Kawato, ATR Human Information Processing Research Laboratories'Head, Prof. Shiro Usui, from Toyohashi University of Technology and Prof. Shinsuke Shimojo from California Institute of Technology.
The evaluation was performed in accordance with strict, constructive and international criteria. One month prior to the meeting a preliminary mail review was conducted so members could familiarize themselves with the Institute. The first day of the meeting was assigned to understanding the current status of BSI and consideration of how to proceed with the review. February 25 (Thursday) was the first official day of the evaluation and opened with an address by Dr. Kobayashi, President of RIKEN. This was followed by specialized presentations from the entire Research Group, interviews with the laboratory heads, site visits and discussions. The last day was a closed session, restricted to committee members only. In the afternoon an evaluation report was presented to the BSI Director.
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Prof. Arbib Handing Dr. Ito the Review Committee's Report on BSI
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The whole session was conducted enthusiastically, perhaps partly because this was the first Research Review Committee meeting held at BSI, so members had been asked to function as a role model for future review committees. The results of the evaluation were quite favorable in terms of the research plan, process and the results achieved by the three research laboratories of the Group. It was concluded that this Group should continue its research efforts for another five years.
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In addition, the committee made the following observations:
(1) cooperation between different research laboratories should be further intensified; (2) care should be taken to close the wide gap between the theoretical study and the experimental work being conducted in parallel; (3) researchers should be given an opportunity to be promoted (to senior research scientist etc.); (4) graduate and undergraduate students should be allowed more access to the research activities; (5) one additional research laboratory should be considered in order to strengthen the research group (to form an average 4-laboratory research group system). (6) They also suggested a concrete orientation of each research laboratory and expansion of Research Groups of "Creating the Brain" area. (7) With regard to the administration of the Research Review Committee, it was recommended they should be given the opportunity to meet the younger researchers who are playing a core role in the research rather than to make a general site visit.
The meeting was generally considered to be very productive and resulted in constructive suggestions, which will help ensure the continued success of the group in the future.
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