For the eighth consecutive year, leaders of national research institutes from around the world came to Kyoto to attend the Eighth Global Summit of Research Institute Leaders, which was held in conjunction with the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of STS forum. Following presentations by guest speakers from the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and the US Department of Energy, the participants held discussions on the topic of multilateral collaboration among research institutes, and the instruments and mechanisms to support such collaborations. In closing, they adopted a statement identifying a number of challenges for collaboration ranging from “differences in culture, language, and even time zones, to regulatory problems such as funding agency requirements on intellectual property and the affiliations of researchers involved in certain collaborations,” and resolved to use the platform of the Summit to find ways to strengthen their network.
The meeting, was co-hosted by RIKEN and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), and co-chaired by President Hiroshi Matsumoto of RIKEN and President Matthias Kleiner of the Leibniz Association. The participants came from 21 institutes from 12 different countries from Asia, Europe, and North America.