President of the Republic of Slovenia visits KEK Tsukuba and informs the decoration of the Republic of Slovenia to Dr. Yamauchi

H.E. Mr.Borut Pahor, the President of the Republic of Slovenia visited KEK Tsukuba Campus on Oct.23. Dr.Yamauchi explained our successful collaboration history between KEK and Slovenian institutions as well as the KEK research activities overview.

After the introduction session, the President took a facility tour of the Belle II detector and its control room guided by Dr.Yamauchi. The Slovenian collaborators of the Belle II experiment including Dr.Peter Krizan explained the details of the Belle II experiment to the President with the former Belle Spokesperson, Dr.Takasaki, who made the first step of the collaboration with Slovenia, and the current Belle II Spokesperson, Dr.Iijima from Nagoya University as well as the Belle II Project manager, Dr.Ushiroda.

In the end, the President informed us Dr.Yamauchi would be awarded the decoration of the Republic of Slovenia, the Order of Merit, for praising the exceptional work of the Belle/Belle II projects. Dr.Yamauchi said “I am honored to be awarded the Order of Merit for the successful collaboration and I would like to sincerely receive the decoration on behalf of all researchers from the Belle/Belle II projects.”

The ceremony of the presentation of the decoration will be carried out in November, 2019. This will make the much stronger connection between both countries and we hope the BelleII research activity would accelerate further.