From November 17 through 20, 2003, COMDEX 2003, one of the world's largest international tradeshows of information technology, was held in Las Vegas, U.S. This year, the tradeshow focused on enterprise technologies and showcased themes such as mobile computing, security, and utility computing. The four-days event attracted some 50 thousand visitors.

AIST and AIST Innovations, in search of new business opportunities, exhibited outcomes available for technology transfer in the field of information technology and venture business technologies created by AIST. The exhibition covered twelve different themes and the booth was crowded with many technology experts right from the start of the tradeshow. More than a dozen negotiations on the technology transfer were begun, which are expected to lead to licensing in the future. AIST's exhibition this year was crowned by an unexpected visit to the booth by Chairperson Bill Gates of Microsoft Corporation, while the seal-like robot called "Paro" receiving the Best of COMDEX 2003 Finalist Award.

On December 5, 2003, Philippe Busquin, a member of the European Commission in charge of science, research, development, and joint research centers, visited AIST's Tsukuba Research Center.

Vice President Kodama gave an outline of AIST to him, followed by Director Jigami of the Research Center for Glycoscience, who explained his Center's research activities in glycotechnology, and Dr. Yamaga of the Nanotechnology Research Institute, who introduced his Institute's studies in drug deliveries. Then the European Commission member visited the laboratory of the Intelligent Systems Research Institute and saw a demonstration of a humanoid robot that walks and greets in French. To conclude the visit, the European Commission people present said, "Thank you for all the explanations which were fascinating, and we hope AIST will continue to strengthen the collaborations with the institutes and laboratories in Europe."

VAST (re-structured from NCST) representatives, Dr. NGUYEN KHOA SON (Vice President), Dr. CHU TRI THANG (Director of International Cooperation Department), and Dr. BUI CONG QUE (Director, Department of Planning and Finance) visited AIST on March 5th.

VAST, which consists of headquarter and 20 research institutes, is a cabinet-level orga nization under Prime Minister's direct supervision like other ministries. The research topics, which have the potential to become joint research, were presented by AIST researchers, being followed by lively discussions and negotiations with the representatives of VAST at the AIST International Affairs Department.

The topics were as follows; Measurement and Standardization by Dr. Akamatsu, Open Source Multilanguage by Dr. Takahashi, Oceanography by Dr. Okamura, and On-the-Job-Training at the Geological Museum by Dr. Aoki.

The topics had been selected by research coordinators and directors of research units of AIST. The topics were also introduced to executives and researchers of VAST when AIST representatives visited VAST in February.

The discussions and negotiations were very successful. In order to follow up the discussions and foster a better mutual understanding, the first work shop is planned at VAST, around October 2004. The specific topics and the date of the workshop will be discussed and decided.

More than 7,000 people attended the "SC2003 International Conference," an event co-hosted by the ACM and the IEEE Computer Society from November 15 through 21, 2003 in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S. At the conference, AIST exhibited the outcomes of its Grid Technology Research Center, displaying sixteen explanatory panels spanning a wide range of research fields from cluster technology to middleware and applications, and publishing three kinds of middleware developed by the Center free of charge. Researchers visited the AIST booth were very impressed by the demonstrations and major verification tests held there.

A contest was held as part of the conference, and AIST joined the "HPC Challenge" and "Bandwidth Challenge" competitions in collaboration with some other research institutes. AIST's team won the Most Geographically Distributed Application Award and the Distributed Infrastructure Award. In addition, at "SC Global," a distributed international conference using Access grid technology, AIST, together with Waseda University and XING Inc., harmonized karaoke singers from five different nations into a single global chorus, demonstrating a brand-new usage of grid technology.