President of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Tsuyoshi SUGINO, Director of the Department of Chemical Sciences and Materials Technology, Lidia ARMELAO, Professors, Scholars and Researchers, good morning and welcome to the Residence of the Italian Ambassador in Tokyo, a “house-museum” from the mid-1960s overlooking a beautiful and famous Japanese garden of the seventeenth-century.
Once owned by the Matsudaira feudal clan and later the private residence of Matsukata Masayoshi, an influential politician of the early Meiji period, this magnificent place is the site of the Italian Embassy since 1930 and ideally represents the union between our cultures and Nations.
It is, therefore, a great honor to host here the signing ceremony of a new Memorandum of Cooperation between the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and the National Research Council of Italy.
Italy and Japan share a long and distinguished tradition of scientific and technical collaboration that lasts over 100 years. Our first bilateral agreement in science and technology, signed in 1988, laid the foundation for joint projects, research exchanges, workshops and conferences.
On that basis, executive programs have supported thriving partnerships across a wide spectrum of fields: from physics to life science, from robotics to materials science, from space to energy, just to mention some of the areas of joint research.
Over the years, the scientific cooperation has expanded steadily and today, hundreds of bilateral agreements connect Italian and Japanese universities, scientific institutions and research centers, creating a strong academic a scientific network.
This long standing cooperation has been relaunched in the framework of the Strategic Partnership announced by our Prime Ministers in January 2023. The following Action Plan, approved for the 2024-2027 period, has further promoted the relations in the academic and scientific sectors.
As a follow up, our Ministers of Research decided to support two important joint scientific projects, one on batteries and the other on gravitational waves, that involve CNR and INFN on the Italian side and JST, NIMS and AIST on the Japanese side. Two more projects in the fields of bio-tech and robotics hopefully will follow next year.
On this backdrop, the existing academic and scientific networks are also expanding. Taking advantage of the opportunities offered by Expo Osaka, we presented in Japan the five new National Centers for technological research and organized the 1st Forum of Rectors and Presidents of Italian and Japanese Universities.
It is therefore with great satisfaction that we witness today the renewal of the Memorandum of Cooperation between CNR and JSPS, which is a long standing and effective tool to promote research exchanges between our Countries.
This agreement builds on the excellent results of past collaboration, while opening new horizons for the future, and it will further strengthen our scientific partnership in key areas, including those identified by the bilateral Action Plan.
Let me conclude by thanking you very much for your continuous commitment to promote scientific cooperation between Italy and Japan. I really wish a successful implementation of this agreement.
Thank you.