NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
TOKYO REGIONAL OFFICE

January 11, 2002

The National Science Foundation's Tokyo Regional Office periodically reports on developments in Japan that are related to the Foundation's mission. It also provides occasional reports on developments in other East Asian countries.

Tokyo Office Report Memoranda are intended to provide information for the use of NSF program officers and policy makers; they are not statements of NSF policy.

The Okazaki National Research Institutes (ONRI) are located in Okazaki, Aichi Prefecture, approximately 30 minutes north of Nagoya by express train. ONRI consists of three independent research institutes: the Institute for Molecular Science (IMS) established in 1975, the National Institute for Basic Biology (NIBB) established in 1977, and the National Institute for Physiological Sciences (NIPS), also established in 1977. Each of these institutes is supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) and qualifies as an inter-university research institute, meaning that each has the authority to accept graduate students for research and to grant the Ph.D. degree.

ONRI was established as an overarching administrative organization in 1981. Currently ONRI has 49 professors, 62 associate professors and 121 research associates, in addition to 170 technical and administrative support staff.

In addition to the three independent research institutes, ONRI supports several research facility centers that provide services to the institutes: the Research Center for Computational Science, the Center for Experimental Animals, and the Center for Radioisotope Facilities. On April 1, 2001, ONRI established a new Center for Integrative Bioscience, intended to encourage collaborative research among scientists from the three independent institutes. Several visitors from other institutions in Japan are also currently working at this center, and ONRI management hopes to obtain support from MEXT to hire additional research staff who are not affiliated with the three existing institutes.

Additional information about ONRI appears on its website: http://www.orion.ac.jp/index_e.html.

Highlights of the organization and selected research activities of the ONRI institutes follow.

The Institute for Molecular Science (IMS) was established in 1975 and hence was the first of the three institutes to be established at Okazaki. The aim of IMS is to investigate the fundamental properties of molecules and molecular assemblies through both experimental and theoretical methods. Research at IMS focuses on three main areas:

1. design and synthesis of novel materials,
2. photo-physics and photo-chemistry, and
3. reaction dynamics.

IMS comprises 22 research laboratories, each staffed by a professor, an associate professor, two research associates and several technical associates. The laboratories are grouped into six departments:

1. Department of Theoretical Studies,
2. Department of Molecular Structure,
3. Department of Electronic Structure,
4. Department of Molecular Assemblies,
5. Department of Applied Molecular Science, and
6. Department of Vacuum Ultra Violet Photoscience and Photochemistry

There are also a number of central facilities including a facility for coordination chemistry and an Ultraviolet Synchrotron Orbital Radiation (UVSOR) Facility.

Since its inception, IMS has made its facilities available to the international scientific community, a policy that has fostered many joint programs involving IMS scientists. It is estimated that IMS has some 200 overseas visitors every year. The length of these varies from two weeks up to several months. Longer-term visits are also made possible each year by means of:

1. four visiting professorships,
2. three to five Center of Excellence Fellowships,
3. three visitors under the Japan/Korea fellowships program, and
4. several others funded through JSPS and other Japanese organizations.

IMS also has several formal bi-national programs including programs with institutions in the UK, the United States, and Israel. It remains keen to establish multinational collaborative programs with research organizations in other countries, particularly in East Asia.

IMS’s major new activity over the next 12 months will be the opening of the Molecular Scale Nanoscience Center in April 2002, the aim of which will be to encourage collaboration between technology and biology researchers to enhance the understanding of life sciences at the 1- or 2-molecule level.

Principal long-term challenges facing IMS, according to its senior staff, are:

1. the variable quality of post graduate students,
2. the inflexible academic system in Japan making many activities, e.g., the hiring of post-docs, difficult;
3. science policy in Japan, and in particular the increasing emphasis on applications, and
4. the need to become more international and to participate in multinational collaboration.

Theoretical Studies is the largest Department in IMS, staffed by some 40 to 50 people. Staff members comprise a mixture of chemists and physicists. The main research focus is basic molecular theory covering photo-molecular science, molecular materials and chemical reaction dynamics. The department works closely with experimental researchers, developing new theories for experimental output. The department also includes the Research Center for Computational Science. There are very few theoretical chemists in Japan and the department is believed to contain the best theoretical chemistry group in Japan. The group has a wide range of international collaborations. At present, working in the department, are two Americans, three Russians, four Chinese, one Taiwanese and two Koreans.

Much of the current focus of the department is on the development of nano-materials with new molecular structures. As an example, the department has invented a small magnet, which is being developed as a drug-delivery system. A patent application for the material had been submitted. [NB: The department has been increasingly under pressure from the Government to submit patent applications.]

The Theoretical Studies Department will be the home of the new Molecular Scale Nanoscience Center opening in April 2002, one of 10 new nanoscience centers being established throughout Japan. This Center will focus on intermolecular interactions and nanobiology. There will be five departments within the center, with 60 percent of the staff being permanent employees of IMS, and 40 percent seconded from other Japanese research organizations.

Ultraviolet Synchrotron Orbital Radiation Facility. The UVSOR accelerator complex consists of a 15 MeV injector linac, a 600 MeV booster synchrotron, and a 750 MeV storage ring. The storage ring consists of eight bending magnets and three insertion devices. The facility has twenty beam lines, eleven of which are open for general use. The other nine are for in-house research. Some 700 scientists?mainly from academia?visit each year to use the radiation source. There is little industrial usage. The facility is now 18 years old, and beam emittance is fairly high, typical of a “second generation” synchrotron. IMS is planning to reconstruct the synchrotron system to reduce emittance, allowing the machine to be operative for another 15-20 years. The machine is primarily used for ultra violet spectroscopy. Most researchers requiring x-rays use the SPring-8 facility in Harima.

The National Institute for Basic Biology (NIBB), which emphasizes basic research on cellular and molecular biology, consists of three departments (Cell Biology, Developmental Biology, and Regulation Biology) and one Laboratory (Gene Expression and Regulation). These organizations are further subdivided into 17 divisions, each of which concentrates on its own research project(s) and consists of a professor, an associate professor and two research associates. A varying number and mix of post-doctoral and graduate students support the research in each division. Adjunct professors who also hold positions at Japanese universities head six of the divisions. These six adjunct professor positions rotate every few years, thereby facilitating further exchanges among Japanese research organizations. Research emphases within divisions also shift periodically with the change of leadership.

NIBB, like the other institutes in Okazaki, also has a number of foreign researchers involved in “long-term” research efforts (i.e., months and in some cases 2-3 year adjunct programs).

Discussions among Japanese scientists working in the area of physiology about the need for a central institute for physiological sciences in Japan had already begun by 1960. The increasing need for interdisciplinary research and access to specialized large-scale equipment seems to have been a primary motive behind this perceived need. While both the Science Council of Japan and the Science Council of Monbusho officially advised the government in 1967 that an institute should be established as early as possible, The National Institute for Physiological Sciences (NIPS) did not start its activities until 1977, and gradually it built up its organization during the next four years. Additional departments and divisions were added in later years. The total number of regular staff now numbers 93, of whom 62 are researchers and 31 are technical staff. There are 13 adjunct professors and around 20 postdoctoral fellows. In addition there are a number of visiting researchers and doctoral students.

NIPS today is very strongly concentrated on neuroscience. About 85-90 percent of the professors have a background in neuroscience. Even as long ago as 1990, as many as two-thirds of the faculty probably were neuroscientists. This strong emphasis on neuroscience partly reflects the fact that more than half of all professors in physiology departments in Japanese universities are neuroscientists, supposedly a very high share when considering the same proportion in international terms. An historical explanation for this may be that in the early years, physiology departments in Japan were quite small and a large proportion of the few chairs offered at the most prestigious universities came to be occupied by brain scientists. This later also came to influence other universities (to make a correct comparison between the medical research communities of Japan and those of other countries, one would of course need to look at all departments, not just those relating to physiology).

Under the leadership of Dr. Kunihiko Obata, who is Head of the Laboratory of Neurochemistry and also President of the Japan Neuroscience Society, A Brain Research Cooperative Program recently was organized between NIPS and the American NIH/NINDS (National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke). The two institutes serve as coordinators of the cooperation, which also involves researchers from other scientific institutions of the two countries. NIPS also has a special collaboration with three scientific institutions in Korea: Korea University, Seoul National University, and Yonsei University. Of course there is also international cooperation on the level of individual scientists, e.g. with scientists in Canada, France, Germany, Sweden, Bulgaria, etc. Many postdocs from the latter country are currently working in the Ultrastructure Research Laboratory of Dr. Kuniaki Nagayama. Additionally, the societies for neuroscience in Japan and France are working together, and the Japan Neuroscience Society is participating in a pan-Asian collaboration of neuroscience societies.

Ethical committees at NIPS deal with such matters as brain research, animal experiments, and stem cells and cloning. The latter two topics are handled jointly with the Institute of Basic Biology. Citizens are represented on NIPS' ethics committees.

The S&T Diplomats’ Circle group visited five laboratories:

Membrane Biology Laboratory (Dr. Kasai Haruo): Femtosecond lasers used for measuring the fine structure of so-called spines (parts of neuronal dendrites) in order to try to determine the "physical unit of memory".

Higher Brain Function Research Project (Dr. Tadashi Isa): Studies of saccadic eye-movements (rapid movement of the eye performed to fixate on an object) using both molecular-level and behavioral experiments, aiming at understanding integrative brain functions.

Laboratory of System Neurophysiology (Dr. Shigemi Mori): Training of monkeys to walk bipedally (beautifully!) as a means of studying sensory-motor integration. (After the monkeys become accustomed to walking bipedally, they become disinclined to walk quadrupedally.)

Sensory and Motor Function Research Project (Dr. Ryusuke Kakigi): Use of Magnetoencephalograph (MEG) to measure small magnetic fields from the brain and thereby to study human brain functions.

Cerebral Integration Laboratory (Dr. Norihiro Sadato): Use of a new functional NMR (fNMR) for imaging of brain functions, e.g., reorganization of the brain in response to the lack of a certain type of sensory stimulus. The fNMR is the newest addition to the equipment park at NIPS.