Welcome Address

For the continuing sustainable development of our society, it is of great importance to enhance our capabilities of producing new insights into the foundations of basic science. This creative enterprise should involve not only established scientists, but must also include the next generation of young scientists. To this end, we need to create an environment that trains and supports many excellent young scientists, who will later become leaders in the international academic community.

The Center for Correlated Electron System (CCES) is a newly formed research center supported by the Institute of Basic Science (IBS), with the aim to identify novel functional heterostructure oxide thin films, and to study the correlated-electron physics that governs the behavior of such oxide thin films. Progress in this area of study holds the promise to pave the way towards useful devices based on functional oxide heterostructure.

To attain this goal, this center is undertaking a systematic search for new correlated electron systems exhibiting novel phenomena that do not exist in bulk materials. In strongly correlated materials, the strong interaction between electrons leads to many unusual phenomena, such as spontaneous magnetic phase transitions and superconductivity. It is my belief that the interface between both strongly correlated and conventional materials holds a particularly great promise for the discovery of completely new physical phenomena.

Our research center is beginning a systematic and wide-ranging research program exploring diverse physical phenomena that occur at interfaces of strongly correlated materials. To support our mission of understanding emerging phenomena at the interface and exploring their possible applications, CCES is building up a wide range of research infrastructure that will serve as an ideal basis for successful and innovative condensed-matter sciences research. Through the choice of this challenging and innovative research subject, I believe that this center will provide ideal conditions for excellent students and postdoctoral researchers to conduct creative research with great impact. Young scientists will have an opportunity to experience research collaborations with leading research groups, both domestic and international. They will also collect valuable experience through the collaboration with many world-leading science facility centers.

I am confident that these efforts will result in the establishment of an active and creative research institution. As a result, it will strengthen the impact of our domestic science base and accelerate the growth of a world-class scientific research environment.