In global scale, environmental and energy issue is the most critical to establish sustainable society. In the G8 Hokkaido Toyako Summit (July 7-9, 2008), "environment and climate change" is one of the central topics. As the national institute of materials research, NIMS takes this opportunity to designate a week of July 14-18th to be the NIMS Week 2008 under the main theme of "Materials Science for Highly Efficient Use of Energy and Resources".
NIMS has been strongly pursuing the research on advanced materials for the environment and energy. The main concern is to create materials with economic and social value responding to the social issues of constructing a safe and secure social infrastructure with reduced environmental and energy loads. In order to elucidate what materials science can do to solve environmental and energy issues, various activities such as the presentation of the second NIMS Award, organized symposia under the main theme and satellite ones with related ideas, will be held during the NIMS Week.
Since 2007, NIMS has been presenting the NIMS Award to a person or a group who has made a remarkable breakthrough in materials science and technology or related fields in recent years. The winner of the NIMS Award will be selected by the Award Committee of the NIMS Conference from the candidates recommended by leading international scientists in materials science and technology (undisclosed) appointed by the Award Committee. In 2007, Professor W. H. Butler who predicted giant magneto-resistance in Fe/MgO/Fe junction was awarded. The second winner will be soon announced on this home page.
Following the NIMS award presentation, the keynote and prospective review lectures by leading researchers of NIMS will highlight the current state of materials researches related to the main theme.
During July 15-16, 9 topical symposia will be held under the subthemes of "Materials for Extreme Environment", "Electrical Energy Materials", "Solar Energy Materials" and "Light Weight Structural Materials". All of the symposia are organized by young scholars in NIMS to have focused and intense discussion on relevant materials research with several invited speakers from all over the world. In addition, 7 satellite symposia will be held before and during the NIMS week.