On June 15, Nagasaki University’s proposed research initiative “Global Strategic Center for Radiation Health Risk Control” was selected as one of the winners of the “FY 2007 Global COE Program”.

As the President of Nagasaki University, I consider this honor very significant for the following three reasons.

First of all, this is the remarkable result of a continuous endeavor in Radiation Medical Sciences by the research project leader, Professor Shunichi Yamashita, and his trusted staff of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. Their study received the highest rating in the interim assessment of the “21st COE Program” from 2002 to 2006, and its high standard has already been widely recognized. I am very proud that they have established a global research network in Radiation Medical Sciences with research institutes around the world including Chernobyl and Kazakhstan and internationally renowned organizations such as WHO, and that their various achievements in international medical initiatives have come to be appreciated with the help of this strong network.

In addition to its endeavors toward fundamental research, Nagasaki University aims to be of assistance to the people most in need of its accomplishments in science, by working close to them in the areas of concern. I believe our sincere challenge to give reality to the concept of “science to create global peace” and our diligent efforts have been justly acknowledged.

The second is that our subject in this field of research was “Interdiscipline, Combination, and New Area”. Although Nagasaki University consists of eight faculties and one research institute, it has no such departments in basic learning as literature, law, and science, unlike other large-scale national university corporations. Its undergraduate and graduate schools concentrate mainly on applied science. However, we have never taken this fact as a negative factor. Rather, we have always thought of this as an opportunity and have tried to create new disciplines crossing the borders between established learning fields, thus taking up the challenge to develop Nagasaki’s unique and traditionally-fostered “forever enterprising spirit”. I believe that our mission is to put into practice our philosophy as a “center for the transmission of intellectual information” by creating the cutting edge in science and continuously conveying our achievements to the world. Winning the “FY 2007 Global COE Program” will certainly be one of the driving forces to promote that mission. The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science pointed out that “research needs to be reinforced in both its social science aspect and its physical chemistry aspect by an interdisciplinary point of view, and it also needs further elaboration and deliberation to become a firmer base for educational research” as well. On this advice, I have realized that there are still more issues in which we have to make improvements. In the soon-to-be opened Graduate School of International Health Development (Master’s program), we plan to enhance the areas of humanities and social sciences with unique arrangements for undergraduate students to be able to attend classes in other disciplines.

Finally, this research originated in the self-sacrificing efforts of our seniors and forerunners who devoted themselves to the treatment of radiation victims during the terrible devastation by the atomic bomb. Nagasaki University lost 897 and then up to 1,000 precious lives of faculty/administrative staff and students in Nagasaki Medical College and various predecessor schools, respectively. The University lived this together with the people of Nagasaki and supported them or was supported by them when the whole city was trying to recover from the atomic disasters. The research field “Global Strategic Center for Radiation Health Risk Control” emerged from Nagasaki’s recovery and development. In that sense, we have to be grateful to the citizens of Nagasaki.

Yet, it is also true that we cannot feel genuine “joy”, since we all know the background in which this research subject was born. We are fully aware of our responsibilities as a University in Nagasaki, having experienced and inherited the tragedy of the atomic bomb. On winning the “Global COE Program” in the year of the 150th anniversary of the School of Medicine, Nagasaki University remains determined to make further contributions to local society and the world, ever recalling the calamity of 62 years ago.

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