On June 20, Yongyuth Yuthavong, Minister of Science and Technology of Thailand, with over 20 dignitaries including the director of Thailand’s National Synchrotron Radiation Center, visited SPring-8 (the world’s biggest synchrotron radiation facility) in Harima, Hyogo Prefecture.
Kenji Takeda, Executive Director of RIKEN, and Kanji Fujiki, Deputy Director-General of MEXT (the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology), gave a welcome address at the luncheon. Akira Kira, Director General of the Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute, described SPring-8 and Hiroyoshi Suematsu, director of RIKEN Harima Institute, described the XFEL (X-ray Free Electron Laser). After a general account, they inspected SPring-8’s central control room, beam lines and so on. Tetsuya Ishikawa, Project Leader of XFEL, showed the visitors the prototype accelerator of XFEL.
Yongyuth asked many questions ranging from industrial applications to machine engineering. Finally, Yongyuth expressed his desire to strengthen scientific collaborations with SPring-8 to encourage the use of synchrotron radiation in industrial applications in Thailand.
