Atsuto Suzuki Director General

2008.05.14
Heartbeats of Elephants and Mice

At the beginning of the new fiscal year, let me make an annual address. First of all, I should relate to Chinese Astrology. This is the Year of the Mouse, which has a large number of heartbeats in extremely contrast to Elephant. Mouse is somewhat a symbol of hard and quick workers. Here exists the empirical formula in which the number of heartbeat times a life expectancy is constant in the mammal. This reminds me that only a bundle of short-period projects/plans deplete our research activities soon like the age of Mouse. Thus both of Mouse-like (short-range) and Elephant-like (long-range) projects/plans should be promoted with an equal weight in parallel. This is one of the guiding principles in making the KEK roadmap of future projects (Ref. 1). Here I would like to introduce you the Last Year of the Boar in Chinese Astrology, which is said to attack fiercely in a strait line. I think three types of people are essential to get KEK going much more. The first type is young people for obvious reason. The second is people from outside. We welcome new point of views. The third is people who push themselves hard into the direction to achieve a goal. Needless to say, that the last type is the Boar type. To get the KEK future projects really going, we need the third type more than ever.

The KEK roadmap of projects for coming 5 years was thoroughly investigated in the international review committee last March. Recommendations and comments from the committee are all supportive to the KEK visions for the roadmap and encouraging to us.

Now it is the time for us to take actions toward accomplishing the KEK roadmap. I shall do my utmost to get as much outside support as possible as the facility for researchers from all over world. I shall also welcome good suggestions from anyone.