In what way can those who work at the National Institute for Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) expect to grow?

The people who make up AIST include not only those engaged in research but also those involved in research management. Some of these people will spend their entire careers at AIST, while others will spend only a few months or years with us. Furthermore, both "research" and "research management" cover a lot of ground. Research activity can vary widely in content depending on the field. For this reason, one person's time here may be very different from the next person's. But even though their activities may differ, they must somehow stay connected. I believe that every organization must offer something unique in terms of what its members gain from working there and how they grow. I believe AIST offers this unique environment.

For anyone who seeks to join and work within an organization, the potential for growth is usually a deciding factor. Even the motivation for joining seems to be an organizationfs social prestige or its efficacy as a stepping stone to other jobs. A more fundamental motive often lies beneath those superficial considerations, and that is the organization's unique possibilities for personal and professional growth. This is a positive motivation, for it is only when people use this criterion that an organization acquires members truly suited to carrying out its purpose. In other words, this is a necessary condition for any organization to play an effective and uniquely meaningful role in society.

AIST does indeed offer unique growth possibilities, but it is necessary that we elucidate them from time to time to ensure that all of us share the same understanding. It is also vital that every one of us works continuously to further develop these possibilities.

Before examining the special nature of professional growth at AIST, let me first express my personal views on the subject of growth. The first necessary condition for people to grow in their work is that they have an overarching goal, and secondly, that they be provided with an environment conducive to achieving that goal. By overarching, I mean "global" as opposed to "local" - in other words, a goal whose intent is to make a real difference to society. The criteria for such a goal do not include whether it helps one advance to a high position or secure generous research funding. I am not opposed to such aims, but I do not believe they have much effect on a person's growth. For someone involved in research, these are things that may be gained when others recognize the value of one's research management skills or research results; they should be regarded as outcomes, not goals. These superficial dreams will contribute nothing to a person's development. The single biggest factor affecting a researcher's professional growth is whether he or she has a goal formulated with the intent of making a difference to society. By defining the relationship between one's research and society, it requires the researcher to outline the social implications of his or her research topic. And this is the first step to filling a major condition to be met before one can be considered an independent researcher: social responsibility. The second condition, that one be provided with an environment conducive to achieving such a goal, requires no explanation.

Now let us see how all this applies to AIST in general and its researchers in particular. The overarching common goal of the Institute is to generate industrial technology that will contribute to sustainable development. As long as this remains an abstract concept, it will have no special impact on our researchers, and accordingly, it will have no positive effect on the Institute's outcomes. This goal is only meaningful when it has clearly shaped each researcher's selection and pursuit of a research topic as seen in a realistic mechanism for contributing to the goal and a practical research plan. This is not always easy.

What sort of technology is necessary for industries that contribute to sustainable development, i.e., "sustainable industries"? Some examples are technology for environmental monitoring, restoration of degraded environments, renewable energy sources, energy conservation, design of sustainable products, sustainable manufacturing (as well as inverse manufacturing), waste management, life-cycle management, and environmental conservation. As even a cursory look at this list reveals, these are not solutions that can be developed within the confines of a single traditional field of technology; rather, they demand a synthesis spanning multiple fields. This means that each researcher needs to work with researchers in other fields even while remaining grounded in his or her own field. Moreover, the kind of cooperation required is often something with which no one has prior experience, necessitating the development of new models of cooperation and a common language to facilitate dialogue between different fields. In essence, it requires the creation of an ad hoc discipline.

This type of technological research raises another, more fundamental issue, and this concerns the science supporting such interdisciplinary research. In most cases, when one creates an ad hoc discipline, one needs to return to the basic science underlying the disciplines one seeks to merge. However, in the case of technological research for sustainable industry, we sometimes find that, in fact, there is no basic science to return to. Consider, for example, the field of waste-management technology, specifically underground disposal of radioactive waste. The key here is the long-term structural stability of the ground in which the waste is buried. But, we know that it is currently difficult to make reliable predictions concerning ground stability owing to our insufficient understanding of the way the changes in geologic strata and transfer of substances.

What is the current state of scientific knowledge? Research into the microscopic structure of matter has progressed, yielding fairly detailed knowledge regarding even the elementary particles. Yet our macroscopic understanding of things like plate tectonics remains rudimentary. There is a serious reason for this seemingly illogical imbalance. It is widely assumed that scientific knowledge is neutral and balanced because the driving force behind it is the pure intellectual curiosity of scientists. But scientists are human beings and as such are often caught in the spirit of the times in which they live. The fifteenth century, when modern science first began to blossom, was the golden age of navigation - the Age of Exploration, when European civilization, at that time the center of scientific knowledge, was bent on exploring every corner of the earth. Scientific curiosity and the impulse to amass material wealth reinforced one another to create the spirit of the age - the impulse to journey forth as far as possible. And in one form or another, that spirit has continued even to today. In response, science has ventured not only as far out as possible by means of space travel but also as far into matter as possible by means of microscopic observation. Such exploration was motivated by curiosity to discover what lies beyond, or within, and this curiosity was quickly gratified thanks to the development of the telescope and the microscope as tools. In addition, the knowledge gained through observation was organized into theoretical systems, which in turn gave rise to further knowledge.

Scientific curiosity - the urge to explore the unknown - tends to focus on explaining the nature of things and phenomena that exist in nature, and science has progressively revealed to us the universal and unchanging aspects of existence. As a result, it seems that science has concerned itself only secondarily with the process of change as it affects these existing phenomena. Speaking in terms of the two major theories of the ancients, that matter is made up of atoms and that all things are in flux, we might say that human curiosity has always been heavily biased toward the atomic theory. This predilection overlaps with and has thus been reinforced by the desire to make use of that which exists in nature. The historical changes that such entities have undergone are not as pertinent to the fulfillment of that desire.

The extended Age of Exploration has also been an age of unrestrained development. Today, however, we are entering the age of the environment, in which development must be restrained by the limits of sustainability. The central ideal of the new era is protection of the global environment. Thus, the key object of intellectual curiosity must shift to how that which exists in the present will change over time, a question corresponding to the ancient notion that all things are in flux. Increasingly today, experts are pointing to our lack of knowledge in this area as a key problem and calling for scientists to accumulate a new kind of basic knowledge to answer questions that cannot be answered by applying our existing store of scientific knowledge.

Thus we can see why one often finds, when attempting to develop technology that will be of use to industry, that the basic knowledge on which the desired technology must be built does not exist. And the more the desired technology differs qualitatively from the technology of the past, the greater the probability that this phenomenon will occur. There is no doubt that if the technology we are attempting to develop at AIST is to assist the transition to sustainable industry, it should be qualitatively different from the technology of the past. The need for a highly accurate theory to predict the shifting of matter within the geologic strata in order to develop a technology for underground disposal of radioactive waste is only one example among many. A great deal of new basic knowledge will be needed to realize the technologies required for sustainable industry.

As the foregoing makes clear, AIST researchers are called upon to conduct basic research in new areas with the understanding that a lack of basic knowledge has hindered research into industrial technology. Here we see a new image of the researcher that was never envisioned in traditional science and engineering. The topic of such a researcher's project may shift midway from engineering to science. In some cases the same researcher may continue with the changed topic, while in other cases the original researcher may hand off the new topic to another. In either case, the fact remains that any researcher involved in these areas must have a deep understanding of science as well as engineering, and this can raise difficulties. However, at AIST our researchers overcome such difficulties, motivated by the shared overarching goal. This is the first characteristic of AIST.

The second characteristic is that the institute provides an environment conducive to research carried out with the overarching goal of creating sustainable technology. On the basis of the foregoing discussion we know that such an environment is, above all, one that supports the process of creating ad hoc disciplines of study and moving back and forth between science and engineering - that is to say, an environment that supports the process of switching between different modes of thinking. This process is not something that was traditionally required of researchers, and for that reason it is fair to say that the structure for supporting it did not exist previously in any public research facility. At universities, for example, science and engineering have always been clearly separated from one another; even if the two were linked in name, they were never fused in deed. The different fields of study that must be merged to create an ad hoc discipline have always been treated as discrete disciplines and have carried out both research and education separately. Under these circumstances there was never even an awareness of the possibility of such a process. Thus, if there is one unique thing that AIST offers the people who work here in relation to professional growth, it is an environment that supports this process. This environment is what we call Full Research.

We at AIST regard the concept of Full Research as the foundation on which the Institute's mission is carried out. Full Research was conceived as a mechanism for fostering the development of knowledge born from basic research into practical technology that can contribute to advances in industry. Thus it can be regarded as one approach to research management. However, as the preceding discussion makes clear, it also provides a setting conducive to growth for a certain type of researcher. Following this line of thought, we can say that it is setting that nurtures researchers accomplished in two types of thinking, the analytical thinking characteristic of science and the synthetic thinking characteristic of engineering, and further, who can understand the position of their own academic discipline relative to other disciplines. In such a setting researchers use both analysis and synthesis as appropriate to a given phase of research; they respect and accept other disciplines when mapping out a course of research; and they willingly learn and cooperate.

This is one ideal image of the type of researcher that the research community needs today. It is diametrically opposed to the traditional image of the researcher as one who works independently, shut off from the outside world, totally absorbed in one field of study and dedicated exclusively to expanding the frontiers specific to that field. Both types of researcher are necessary to scholarly research, that is, to the solution of the myriad issues facing humankind, and neither is more important than the other. The important thing is that any given research facility be deliberately and clearly designed to foster one type of researcher or another.

AIST has been designed with an awareness that an organization is, by nature, something formed by people. Our organization is designed not to restrict or constrain people, but to provide settings that offer new possibilities. It is up to each individual researcher to take advantage of these possibilities. AIST offers the possibility for people to learn on their own and develop as members of a new breed of researcher while working toward the shared research goal of developing sustainable technology. In this sense, AIST is not only a research facility but also an educational institution in the broadest sense of the word - a learning institution. Here both researchers and research managers grow as they acquire the unique abilities needed to support their particular type of research.

Another principle on which AIST operates is that an organization can best perform its mission when the abilities of each of its members are utilized to the fullest. It is our hope that this principle will come to be applied throughout Japan. In our own case - applying it to people conducting basic research oriented to industrial technology - we would like to be a place where universities, research institutes, and corporations network with one another, providing a setting for varied yet systematic learning. Recently there has been considerable emphasis on the need to nurture human resources in the area of science and technology. Needless to say such activity cannot be focused solely in the creation of new organizations. All existing facilities need to think about partnering to create new learning environments. I would like 2006 to be the year such a partnership takes shape, with AIST leading the effort.