JST (President: Michinari Hamaguchi) will be holding Science Agora 2018 in the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan) and the Telecom Center Building over a three-day period, from November 9 (Fri) to November 11 (Sun) 2018.
Through Science Agora, we promote initiatives towards "co-creation," which has become increasingly important in recent years
"Co-creation" – companies and other organizations holding dialogues with a variety of people involved (including citizens and service users) and cooperating to create new values – is an important concept when it comes to revitalizing industry. This doesn't just apply to companies; scientists and administrative bodies promote co-creation, and if we don't work to solve social problems, we will not be able to build a better society for the future. Science Agora holds dialogues and cooperates with a range of people, promoting the construction of a co-creation platform that we can link to policy formation and knowledge creation.
"ANA's endeavor to connect all 7.5 billion people on Earth": A globally challenging co-creation that is not confined to one company
This keynote speech will be given by a member of the ANA AVATAR project, which is trying to create new values in fields such as nursing and disaster prevention, overcoming the limitations of an air transport service. The speech will explain the AVATAR project, which is promoting co-creation with cooperation from many different people from around the world. [AVATAR: the synchronous remote control of an avatar (e.g. a robot) of yourself, and of your sight, hearing, and sense of touch. This project will make it possible to transfer your consciousness and senses to any place where there is an avatar, and allow you to experience far-away locations. It may take many decades to make and practically use a highly efficient avatar by fusing different technologies, but through co-creation we expect the time until these avatars become reality to be shortened, and parts of this project are going ahead with demonstration experiments.]
What do you see beyond the achievement of the SDGs? The co-creation of a society that designs the happiness of the future
What kind of society do you see when the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are achieved? By offering a clear, concrete image of that society, we can clarify the measures we should take from now on. This keynote session will welcome individuals who are active at an international level from the perspective of solving social issues, including Ms. Kay Firth-Butterfield (scheduled) who is the head of the Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Project at the World Economic Forum, and discuss in detail the shape of happiness depicted by future scientific technology, and cooperation between a wide range of peoples, including governments, scientists, business operators, the media, and citizens.
A broad range of topics, from AI to fashion
The 10th (Sat) and 11th (Sun) will see the venue move to the Telecom Center Building, where there will be booths and sessions for a total of 177 projects. Scheduled events include an introduction to cutting-edge technology aiming to realize Society 5.0, a symposium that questions the "thinking power" of an age of AI, exhibitions of ideas to solve global issues through science and technology, and an event explaining the future of women in a field of science and technology that welcomes female astronauts. We will feature a wide range of topics, including a workshop where the children of the next generation can consider the SDGs, an initiative that will prepare for disasters using observations from space, genome editing and food, medical-related issues, support for children with a developmental disability, science and technology that allows us to share the senses of another person, and the development of fashion materials that can be used by people with specific disorders comfortably in everyday life; we will also share different ways of thinking, necessary to society in the future.
Science Agora: creation with the middle and high school students and young researchers who make up the next generation
External experts have carefully chosen 120 projects in which anyone can participate for Science Agora 2018; they include dialogues with scientists, symposiums, workshops and exhibits, some of which are booths and sessions run by the young researchers, university students, and middle and high school students who will lead the next generation. Each project will be positioned by topic derived from the character of that project, with the aim of creating a venue arrangement that will be easy to understand. In addition, by situating workshop spaces in open areas, we hope to create a space of active exchange, where visitors will be able to interact with various projects in passing.
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Media Contact
Tomoko Funaki
[email protected]
http://www.jst.go.jp/EN
http://www.jst.go.jp/csc/scienceagora/en/
