Report of the RIKEN SPring-8 Center Advisory Council 2009
Date: February 8 – 10, 2009
AC members:
Jerome B. Hastings

Professor,(Chair)SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Osamu Shimomura

Executive Director,(Vice Chair)

KEK(High Energy Accelerator Research Organization)

Sunggi BaikPresident,
POSTECH(Pohang University of Science and Technology)

Sine Larsen

Director of Research,
ESRF(European Synchrotron Radiation Facility)

Keiichi Namba

Professor,
Osaka University

General statement
The RIKEN SPring-8 Center (RSC) has been playing many important roles in the frontiers of science andtechnology from the materials to the life science fields by providing state-of-the-art experimental
facilities utilizing brilliant light sources as well as by promoting its own research activities. A rather
drastic turnover of many PIs and reorganization of the RSC to a more mission-oriented structure withthree divisions in response to the 1st RSAC 2006 recommendations must have been quite a challenge.
But, together with the new RIKEN’s mission of constructing a compact XFEL facility by the end of FY
2011, the three divisions of the RSC: Innovative Light Sources Division, responsible for the technicaldevelopment of advanced SR sources including XFEL; Photon Science Research Division, carrying out
cutting edge research in life, materials and physical sciences at SPring-8; and Advanced Photon
Technology Division, developing technologies to make best use of SPring-8 and XFEL for users
including industrial sectors, have been actively fulfilling their assigned responsibilities. Now, the XFEL
facility construction is well advanced, to be completed in about two years as originally planned, and therecent achievements, present activities and future plans by the groups in each of the three divisions have
proved the RSC to be one of the best institutes in the world with impressive progress and exciting
potential as described by individual PIs at the RSAC 2009. It is crucial to maintain and further improve
the quality and the level of R&D for the RSC to continue to be a leading figure in the world scientificcommunity and to contribute to the future developments of industrial and medical science and technology.
The task of the RSC to contribute to the benefit of human society is a formidable challenge.

Comments on the specified issues
1. The management system for the RIKEN SPring-8 Center, especially its organizational
structure and administrative systems, with the aim of making the RSC a world-leading
research institute.
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The RSC has reorganized in response to the RSAC 2006 recommendations.
challenging and the RSC has been up to that challenge.

Reorganizations are always

The new mission oriented structure is working

well as can be seen from the comments below about the scientific progress and impact.

That being said

there is a challenge ahead: provide the scientific leadership for the use of the XFEL.

This challenge isnow.

The XFEL will begin operation in just over two years and the recruitment of staff and theestablishment of new laboratories and/or the re-direction of existing staff and laboratories needs to bedone in a very short time.

The approach to this challenge should engage the ultrafast science

community in Japan and take best advantage of the scientific leadership already part of RIKEN, forexample the independent laboratory of Dr. Midorikawa.

There is also a need to expand the role of the advanced photon technology division to include the XFEL.
Only then can the value of the developments for both storage ring and FEL experiments be completelyrealized.

There are unique opportunities but with them come unique challenges.

The structure of a

mission oriented organization is a good platform to meet these challenges, but it needs to be nimble andable to adapt.

It will require strong leadership and cooperation, but the RSC has shown that they are up

to the challenge.
To keep and maintain a vibrant research community on the SPring-8 campus it is critical to have asignificant number of young scientists, students and postdoctoral researchers.

RSC should make aserious effort to understand how to attract more young research staff and graduate students to theSPring-8 campus to get them involved in the world-top level research activities. The number of
postdoctoral fellows and graduate students appears to be rather limited, but the potential opportunities forsuch young people are tremendous. Working with such young people will also stimulate thecommunications and discussion in the SPring-8 community, between groups of different expertise anddisciplines as well as over generations. The isolated location of the campus may be making this place lessattractive to young people, as some PIs mentioned. The RSC must come up with a strategy to make thisplace more attractive.

This may require additional financial support.

2. The research programs and the collaborative activities inside and outside RIKEN that are
currently being conducted or are planned for the RSC (from the viewpoints of both scientificand social/societal impacts)
Life sciences:
Structural biology is certainly one of the main RSC research activities. The RSC has been playing
essential roles in providing cutting-edge SR beamline technologies to the SPring-8 user community so2that structural biology in Japan has a strong presence in the world scientific community, both in highthroughput structural genomics and structural biology of membrane protein complexes, for which
high-resolution structural information is important for biological as well as medical sciences but is still
usually difficult to obtain. The RSC’s own research activities in structural biology are also showing
impressive progress and remarkable achievements in those two aspects as well. It is also important tonote that the RSC has a few groups studying three-dimensional structures of large macromolecularcomplexes, membrane proteins and cells by electron microscopy (EM) and image analysis. Since EM is acomplementary technique to X-ray diffraction and also many of the EM image analysis techniques will
be useful for single-particle diffraction imaging by XFEL, the EM groups are expected to play importantroles in the future research activities of the RSC as a whole.
It is, however, rather a shame that the RSAC members shared an impression that the interactions between
groups involved in structural biology are not as well coordinated as they could be like those seen
between the groups of material sciences by the strong leadership of Dr. Takata. It would be nice to see
more cohesive interactions between the groups in structural biology, which could be promoted just by
sharing more facilities and resources or may need some leading figure over-viewing and coordinating theactivities of the groups.
The recent publication in Nature of the F-actin structure by X-ray fiber diffraction analysis wasparticularly impressive, not only because the scientific impact of the work is high but also because theRSC has maintained its support to this rather long-term study, which needed a specific superconducting
magnet to make highly-oriented liquid-crystalline sol specimens of the F-actin filament and a specificbeamline setup appropriate for high-quality fiber diffraction data collection and took more than a decadefor Dr. Oda to get this work done. We expect the RSC to maintain support for such long-term, high-risk
research activities.
Materials sciences:
Materials science is the other major research area of RSC in the utilization of the accelerator based lightsources on the SPring-8 campus.

RSC scientists are amongst the world leaders in this area.

The RSC

has responded to recommendations from the 2006 RSAC with specific developments that will keep theresearch of the RSC materials team at the forefront.

In particular is the establishment of the materials

dynamics laboratory headed by Dr. A. Baron and the Structural Materials Science laboratory headed byDr. M. Takata.
The Materials Dynamics laboratory has very recently obtained funding for the development of a second
beamline for inelastic x-ray scattering that will open new research opportunities.
the world’s best for the foreseeable future.

This beamline will be

Already the work of the laboratory has had important

impacts on our understanding of the dynamics of novel superconductors ranging from insights in the‘classic’ high TC systems to MgB2 to the recent Fe-As compounds.

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Most importantly they have very

recently begun to investigate electronic excitations in the eV energy loss regime with meV resolution.
The advances in Takata’s laboratory in the use of maximum entropy methods has been similarly
impressive.

They have recently moved from fitting the precise charge density and then deriving theelectrostatic potential to directly fitting the electrostatic potential.

This is a very important step.

Thesetechniques have been applied to a wide variety of materials ranging from charge order in the manganites,
important as GMR systems, to organic systems that show classic metal-insulator transitions
The RSC has been at the forefront of the manipulation of the x-ray polarization and its use for bothmagnetic and chiral systems.

They are developing research efforts in polymers and soft matter.

general they are maintaining a leading position.

InIn this regard they have established the quantum orderresearch group with three sub-groups: spin order, spatial order and excitation order.

Each has forefront

results and the combination may be unique.
Overall the materials research is extremely strong and well integrated in the both Japanese andworldwide materials research community.

Of particular note is the out reach to the industrial

community and the impact of the research.

An exciting example is the study of the amorphous to

crystalline transformation underlying recording of DVDs.

This utilizes a unique combination of x-ray

optics and science capability applied to an important technological area.
It is also of note that the construction and management of the RCS material science beamlines takes thewhole beamline layout at the SPring-8 into consideration, where JAEA, NIMS and other institutions aredeveloping their activities on materials science.

3. The roles that the RSC is expected to take in the research complex (with JASRI and the XFEL)
at the SPring-8 site.
The RSC has been fulfilling its responsibilities to: 1) support the activities of JASRI and 2) play aleading role in the design and construction of XFEL. It is expected that RSC will continue to fulfill these
responsibilities for the future developments of the SPring-8 site. There is no doubt that the responsibilityof the Riken Harima Institute, most naturally the RSC, will expand significantly once the XFEL iscompleted.

To maintain the level of excellence that has put the RSC amongst the world leaders, theRSC will need more resources for both research and technical staff as well as a budget for equipment andsupplies. It would be important for RIKEN to consider appropriate plans to support this crucial expandedrole.

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Recommendations
XFEL research
The XFEL is expected to begin user operations two years from now.
in carrying out world class research with the SPring-8 facility.

The RSC has been very successful

This research role has and will continueto benefit the broad user community.
We recommend that a similar world leading science program for the use of the XFEL be started within
the Riken Harima Institute.

This might be best accomplished by expanding the RSC.

This expanded

role would take best advantage of the existing expertise and technical developments.

Innovative Light Sources Division
The innovative light source division ‘gave birth’ to the compact X-ray Free Electron Laser concept andthe use of a pulsed DC electron gun.

There will be a continued need for development of the SPring-8

XFEL and we recommend this as one role for this division.
synchrotron source upgrade known as SPring-8 II.

There is now an initiative for SPring-8

We take note that the new chief scientist in thisdivision will be in the general area of accelerator physics.
We recommend that this individual take a leading role in meeting the challenges of the published goals
for SPring-8 II to be the ‘ultimate’ storage ring.

Photon Science Research Division1) Life Sciences
The research of the individual teams is of the highest quality.
10 post doctoral researchers.

There are approximately 30 scientists andThe complementary nature of the expertise of the individual teams gives

the RSC the potential to become a true internationally leading center in life sciences.
We recommend the appointment of a life sciences coordinator to capture this potential.

Thiscoordination role should help to:1) Promote closer interactions between the research teams.
2) Ensure the continued development and optimal use of the research infrastructure and resources.
This coordinator position could be rotating taking advantage of the various expertises of the RSC life
science researchers.
2) Materials Science
Energy and the Environment; The Noyori Initiative 4: RIKEN that is useful to world.

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We recommend that the RSC materials effort investigate the research opportunities related to energy andthe environment with a focused, cross cutting approach
It is more fascinating for RSC material science group to be the world leading center in this field by morecollaboration with other groups in SPring-8 such as JAEA, NIMS and so on.

New Initiatives
The Noyori Initiative 5: RIKEN that contributes to culture.

The world synchrotron radiation

community has begun to have impact using SR techniques as analytical tools for the study of cultural
heritage artifacts and archeological finds.
We recommend that the RSC explore these opportunities using Spring-8.

Advanced Photon Technology Division
The present emphasis of the developments appears to focus on the life sciences.

As with the photon

science research division where both life sciences and material sciences are on an equal footing we see asimilar need in the photon technology division.
benefit both areas.

This will inevitably lead to cross fertilization that will

This will become particularly true when the XFEL begins operations and the needfor advanced instrumentation to fully exploit the unique source properties becomes paramount.
We recommend that this division be strengthened and organized to meet the instrumentation challenges.

Young researchers
Young researchers are critical to the research environment. This can have significant impact at the RSC.
We recommend that the RSC look for initiatives that can increase the engagement of young scientists in
the research activities at the RSC.

BudgetWith the recommended expanded role of the Harima Institute in the science program on the SPring-8
campus any efforts that lead to increased resources are crucial to ensure the successful launch of theXFEL science program

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