Outline

What is RIKEN?

RIKEN is Japan's only fully comprehensive research institution for the natural sciences

Since its establishment as the RIKEN Foundation in 1917, we have been active for more than 90 years in a multitude of fields encompassing physics, engineering, chemistry, and life and medical sciences, ranging from basic research to practical application.

RIKEN has three missions: Building the foundations for new technologies, expanding the frontiers of human knowledge, and applying its knowledge toward applications having practical and societal value. To achieve these objectives, there is close collaboration among three groups within RIKEN. The first is a core group consisting of departments and laboratories of the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute (ASI) where novel fields of research are being developed to accelerate progress in science and technology. Next are the strategic research centers that promote high priority projects of national or societal importance, and finally the research infrastructure centers that maintain and manage world-class facilities and equipment.

Research institutes and centers of RIKEN

What is ASI?

ASI is RIKEN's core organization

The strategic research centers and the research infrastructure centers have names that indicate their focus, such as brain science, plant science, developmental biology, accelerator science, bioresources, and the like. The name of the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute or ASI, on the other hand, is not so self-evident. This is because ASI is the only research organization within RIKEN that engages in diverse basic research covering all disciplines of the natural sciences to cultivate new research seeds and foster their development into new research areas and later into new research centers.

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