Computational Science Research Program, RIKEN
Eietsu Tamura

“Next-Generation Integrated Simulation of Living Matter (ISLiM)” has been comprehensively working on the Grand Challenge for Life Science, which is research and development of software in the field of life science targeting the “K computer” since the start of the project in October 2006. This project, which is organized by six research and development teams for Molecular Scale, Cell Scale, Organ and Body Scale, Brain and Neural Systems, Data Analysis Fusion, and High Performance Computing, will be completed at the end of the fiscal 2012.

At the final phase of the program, the “ISLiM International Symposium: 4th Biosupercomputing Symposium” was held from December 3 to 5, 2012, at Tokyo International Forum (Hall D) by inviting the following seven renowned overseas researchers in the field of modeling and simulations for expanding international visibility and collaborations:

　Pharmacueticals – Sandra R. B. Allerheiligen (Merck)
　Brain Science – Sten Grillner (Karolinska Institutet)
　Cell – Ion I. Moraru (University of Connecticut Health Center)
　Medicine – Grace Peng (National Institute of Health)
　Organ – Aleksander Popel (Johns Hopkins University)
　Molecules – Karissa Sanbonmatsu (Los Alamos NationalLaboratory)
　Molecules . Ruhong Zhou (IBM T.J. Watson Research Center)

Koji Kaya, Program Director, gave an opening speech, and two keynote speakers, seven invited speakers and 14 ISLiM speakers presented highlights on the research and development that have been conducted in this program.

There were 145 participants successfully joining the symposium.

The following are comments of some invited speakers from abroad.

• The symposium was very broad and I have expertise in only some and not all areas, but it is a very stimulating symposium and learned a lot.
  
  
• The speeches of Program Director KAYA and Deputy Program Director HIMENO were both helpful in presenting a great picture of the ISLiM Project, and all the other speeches were also well-designed.
  
  
• The ISLiM Project is evidently a success story. It is extremely important to let other countries know about the software researched and developed in the ISLiM project and its experience.
  
  

During three days of symposiums, invited speakers and ISLiM team members communicated actively together. This was a good opportunity to present all the work of ISLiM and its results to major overseas researchers in the field, and gain their international visibilities.

The proceedings of this symposium is available in the Web site (URL:http://www.csrp.riken.jp/4thbscs/program.html).