From November 7 to 9, a group of six personnel from the Max Planck Institute (MPG) came to Japan to participate in the 2nd RIKEN-MPG Administrative Roundtable Meeting. The aim of the meeting was to have personnel from these two national institutes exchange ideas and good practices regarding administrative matters. RIKEN and MPG have been conducting collaborative research for more than 30 years, and the administrative roundtable started last year. The first meeting was held at the MPG’s headquarters in Munich.
RIKEN Executive Director, Motoko Kotani, and MPG Division of International Relations Director, Felix Kahle, opened the meeting with some remarks, and then the representatives of a number of administrative departments from each institute gave presentations about their responsibilities and systems. The roundtable covered a wide range of areas including governance, human resource management, collaboration with external partners and communications, and the participants actively discussed each topic over the two-day period. Participants also discussed the plan for the administrative exchanges that will be held after this fiscal year taking into consideration discussions that took place at last year's and this year's administrative roundtable. On the third day, the members of the MPG delegation were given tours of the Quantum Metrology Laboratory, which is developing super-precise clocks, the Molecular Spectroscopy Laboratory, and the Bioprobe Application Research Unit, which forms part of the RIKEN-Max Planck Joint Research Division.
