MANA 5th Anniversary Memorial Symposium was held with a total of 257 attendees to commemorate the five years since MANA’s inception.

The International Center of Material Nanoarchitectonics (MANA) was launched in October 2007 as one of the research centers of the World Premier International Research Center Initiative (WPI) by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT).

The Symposium started with a welcome address by NIMS President Dr. Sukekatsu Ushioda and continued with 3 congratulatory speeches by Prof. Toshio Kuroki (Director of WPI Program), Prof. Gunzi Saito (Officer of WPI Program) and Prof. Sir Mark Welland (MANA Satellite Principal Investigator at University of Cambridge).

Subsequently, MANA Director-General Dr. Masakazu Aono spoke about “Five-year journey and future challenges of MANA” and Prof. Yoshinori Tokura from University of Tokyo gave a special lecture entitled “Emergent electromagnetic phenomena in solids”.

The later part of the program was entitled “Our Future Challenge in MANA” and consisted of eight oral presentations by the MANA researchers including Prof. James Gimzewski (MANA Satellite Principal Investigator at UCLA), Dr. Jinhua Ye (MANA PI), Dr. Minoru Osada (Associate PI), Dr. Xiao Hu (MANA PI), Dr. Takashi Uchihashi (MANA Scientist), Dr. Genki Yoshikawa (Independent Scientist), Dr. Mitsuhiro Ebara (MANA Scientist), and Prof. Fançoise Winnik (MANA Satellite Principal Investigator at University of Montreal).

In a subsequent laboratory tour, the attendees were divided into four groups.
Dr. Takayoshi Sasaki (MANA PI) and Dr. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa (MANA PI) explained about their research on nanosheets and a brain-type device, respectively.