Aug 18, 2014
Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU)
 Minister Yamamoto and Prof. Ooguri in front of a bust of Robert Millikan, the Founding Director at Caltech. |
 A luncheon with a group of professors |
 Minister Yamamoto also met with a group of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from Japan. |
On July 22, 2014, Ichita Yamamoto, Minister of State for Special Missions (Science and Technology Policy, Space Policy, Okinawa and Northern Territories Affairs), toured Ooguri’s laboratory at California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Ooguri is a Principal Investigator at the Kavli IPMU and the Fred Kavli Professor
and the Director of the Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics at Caltech.
In addition discussing various issues with Prof. Ooguri, Minister Yamamoto met with Caltech’s President Thomas Rosenbaum, had a luncheon with a group of professors, and toured the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) facility and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which is a division of Caltech. He also met with a group of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from Japan.
At the luncheon, Minister Yamamoto discussed the Subaru Measurement of Images and Redshifts (SuMIRe) project with Richard Ellis, the Steele Professor at Caltech. The SuMIRe project aims to reveal the nature of dark matter and dark energy in the universe. Director Hitoshi Murayama of the Kavli IPMU is its Principal Investigator, and Professor Ellis is a member of the SuMIRe collaboration. Among other topics discussed at the luncheon are the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), which is the joint project of Japan, Caltech, and other international partners, the collaboration of the LIGO with Japan’s KAGRA project, and the International Linear Accelerator (ILC) project.
Upon returning to Japan, Minister Yamamoto reported on his Caltech visit at the Cabinet meeting on July 25, 2014. The visit was highly featured in the press conference after the Cabinet meeting. It appears that he has been impressed by the research activities at Caltech.
Related Links
・Transcript of the press conference of Minister Yamamoto on July 25, 2014. (written in Japanese)