2010.01.05
Message from the Director General, 2010
 - A New Year's Address -

In the Fall of the last year, 2009, we in Japan experienced a major turnabout in the political landscape. A new administration was formed as led by Prime Minister Hatoyama of the Japanese Democratic Party. As you are aware, Dr. Hatoyama has been the vice chair of the Federation of Diet members in promotion of the Linear Collider Project in Japan. This Federation was formed in July 2008, and at around the time of the launch of the Federation Dr. Hatoyama stated at the Symposium of the Advanced Accelerator Association Promoting Science and Technology (AAA) that he was hoping to pay a visit to KEK soon. This was seen as one of the few very bright signatures in our world high energy physics community which was otherwise facing rather many difficulties. Unfortunately, our hopeful Fall turned out to be something to be more adequately called a "hapless Fall" of perhaps "black Fall". The new administration found that it needed to create a major budgetary room to meet their campaign pledges, and it launched a very large scale and public national budget review, in search for more efficient national expenditure structure, budget balancing, trimming of wasteful spending and so on. In this cascade of incidents the Japanese budget for basic research turned out to be one of the many casualties. Some may liken this development to a budget "black hole" of 2010. In this metaphor, the center of the black hole is the Panel of the Public Budget Review.
 
This recommendation by the Public Budget Review Panel on the basic research was, of course, met by rather strong reactions. Many scientists, including Nobel Prize Laureates, Council members of National Universities and researchers of related fields openly voiced criticisms. The Presidents of Kanto-Koshin-Etsu-area Universities and four Director Generals of Inter-University Research Institutes (I am one of them) transmitted a letter to the Prime Minister and the Minister of MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) urging them to reconsider. We held a press conference along with Mr. Takashi Tachibana, a famous critics/journalist and a science writer, and appealed to general public about the potential damages that the panel recommendations might lead us to.
 
However, personally, I have been feeling that we were still lacking much needed effectiveness. That is, the effectiveness in terms of our communicating with the general public as to why we do this basic research. I was afraid that our holding press conferences and campaigns against the budget cut might have looked a bit too much like "we are hitting back, since we were hit badly". Rather, should we not better explain why we are not the ones to be hit this way?
 
So, I have taken three actions. For various reasons I cannot elaborate much about the specifics of the first two. However, I can tell you the underlining strategy behind these two actions. That is, to have understanding and appreciation of the importance and the necessity of Inter-University Research Institutes penetrate through a wide range of sectors in our society. I should emphasize that they were not just pleas. Simple pleas would not work for this administration. Then, the third action I took was to post the KEK Public Opinion Poll (December1, 2009) on the outcome of the government assessment. This, many of you must be aware. The guiding principle of the Panel of the Public Budget Review was, "Give the general public what they demand: Increase an effective budget use, and cut down an ineffective budget use". Well, I have to ask if that is what general public really wants? Isn't it a bit too simple minded? So, I decided to solicit opinions from the General Public out there. I am glad to report that we received approximately 800 responses sent in (half of them from overseas) in 10 days.
 
Key persons in the cabinet who are responsible for MEXT heard about our polling. They got interested and invited us to report the results which we did. Our conversation went very well. These cabinet members highly appreciated our action. We covered the optics such as: the scheme of Inter-University Research Institutes, KEK's activities, various budget allocations on research and science. We ended up spending twice the time they allocated for our appointment. It was quite fruitful.
 
I think I learned a few things from all these. I noticed that while we have been trying to communicate with the General Public on the work that KEK is doing, our efforts in this area were still not good enough. We still need improve our ways in explaining what KEK is for, what KEK is at present, what KEK has done and how KEK contributed to the society. This is really a critical key for the future of KEK. Improving public relations, better organizing the database on our activities and making it open to the public, transferring the technologies we have developed to the society are obvious things to do.
 
I am aware that many of you have been doing all these to a certain extent, but I have to tell you that we need to do more. I have set up a group of Assistants to the Director General in 2009. Now they are figuring out how to organize the KEK database, which allows many people in many sectors in the society to readily extract academic, historical and statistical information on the activities at KEK. In the area of communication, we have to do more on the public grass-roots level. For instance, I would like see more outreaching lectures given by each of you at schools, not only as courses at the Inter-university Institutes and Sokendai, but as courses given at high-schools and public teach-in's. Can each of the academic members at KEK try to give at least once of that sort each year? I think this is very worthwhile. And how about publications for the General Public, something that is attractive, readable and something that gives them an "a-ha!" feeling. Can we not publish such a KEK publication a couple of times a year? All these might seem somewhat detached from the usual focus for the academic members at KEK. But I have to tell you that they are not. Yes, you have to do the scientific research, talking to the members of the academic societies in the scientific language; then, you have learn to talk to the members of the general societies in a plain, daily language, too. For these reasons I am currently planning to expand the Group of Assistants to the DG.
 
So the "Black Fall" or "Black Hole" of 2010 gave us a difficulty, but it was also an opportunity that reminded me of one thing that we always should remember. Talk to the General Public of our work in a humble and understandable language. They will learn what sort of scientific issues we have been, are, and will be working on. And we also should learn how our research is connected, sometimes in a direct fashion, sometimes in a more abstract fashion, to lives of the General Public. We have to remember that they are the primary beneficiary of the efforts we do, and they are the ones who would ultimately support such efforts.
 

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On researches;
 
* RCS (Rapid Cycling Synchrotron) of J-PARC succeeded in a continuous operation with a respectable beam power of 300 kW. On the basis of this success, then, we should really shoot for the design beam power. Now everyone is watching how it goes. I am looking forward. I am intending to put most of the budget assigned for DG on this.
 
* KEKB marked a world record on both the integrated luminosity, 1,000 fb^-1, and the peak luminosity. I have received a warm congratulating message from the Director of SLAC. I am delighted to see the evolving opportunity for collaboration with SLAC in the push for Super-KEKB. JFY2010 is likely to see an R&D budget for Super-KEKB. I really hope to see the real budget allocation for it, too.
 
* Photon Factory needs to work out the future plans with its scientific community in the context of bigger national research plans. In that respect, it is important for us to determine how adequately we might as well pursue the KEK-X concept.
 
* LHC re-started its operation. We expect some results to come out rather soon. For ILC, a major milestone this year is completion of TDP1. The key issue is how far we can develop technologies for it. We may need to review our plans.
 
On international matters
 
* We need to polish up the strategies for huge future projects, including how to establish a new management structure besides the required techniques. I have discussed this matter with the CERN Director. The subject includes the ILC, sLHC, and so forth. We found ourselves in agreement on many of the conceptual points. Now the problem is how to start making progress on the specifics.
 
* JAAWS (Joint Asian Accelerator Workshop)
This is an Asian collaboration (present participants are: India, Korea, China, Japan and Russia) on Accelerator Science, with focus on research and application of accelerator and detector technologies. I expect the JAAWS to take more important roles along with the development of Asian economy.
 
Now I shall conclude this address with a story relating to the Year of Tiger, 2010. I expect alternating patters of good and bad news to come in just like the yellow and black stripes of tiger. Many stories about tiger are related to self-restraint. Don't be arrogant. Start with a ground level work.
 

Thank you very much for your kind attention.

Atsuto Suzuki, KEK Director General