Greeting from Director

Frontiers in Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials

　Our institute, Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials, IMRAM, is called TAGEN-KEN in Japanese. 22 years have passed from its foundation, April 2001. Nowadays, the word TAGEN is widely known, since the research in our institute has been carried out over “Multidisciplinary” fields of science and engineering for wide variety of materials. Our basis is, unfailingly, in the successor of three prestigious research institutes of Tohoku university: SENKEN (Research Institute of Mineral Dressing and Metallurgy)-SOZAIKEN (Institute for Advanced Materials Processing), KAKEN (Research Institute for Scientific Measurements) and HISUIKEN (Chemical Research Institute of Non-Aqueous Solution-) -HANNOUKEN (Institute for Chemical Reaction Science). SENKEN was established in 1941, KAKEN was in 1943 and HISUIKEN was in 1944.
　So, about 80 years have passed since the foundation of the former three institutes. Their research spirits are passed down to us, so that the knowledge and experiences integrated from prestigious institutes allow us to establish so many collaborations among members in different fields of our institute. Thus, a plenty of noticeable research results have been achieved. This traditionality led to the establishment of new research centers, Center for Mineral Processing and Metallurgy in 1 April 2018, and Materials-Measurement Hybrid Research Center in 1 April 2021.
　Our institute has been conducting a new activity as a member of the Network Joint Research Center for Materials and Devise from 2010, composed of five national university institutes, Research Institute of Electronic Science (RIES, Denshiken) in Hokkaido Univ., Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials (IMRAM, Tagenken) in Tohoku Univ., Laboratory for Chemistry and Life Science Institute of Innobative Research (CLS, Kaseiken) in Tokyo Institute of Technology, Institute of Science and Industrial Research (ISIR, Sanken) in Osaka Univ., and Institute for Materials Chemistry and Engineering (IMCE, Sendouken) in Kyushu Univ. This network is open to anyone in Japan and the world including colleges, institutes and private companies, who wishes to collaborate with the institutes. Based on the collaborations among the five institutes, the “Crossover Alliance for Open Innovation Bridging Human, Knowledge and Materials” was founded as a national project in April 2022.
　Tohoku University is now promoting the project of a next generation 3 GeV synchrotron radiation facility (named as NanoTerasu), whose performance is optimized for soft X-ray energy region. This energy region covers the K-edges of light elements of Li, B, C, N, and O, and the L-edges of 3d-ransition metal elements, those are all critical ones to current technological challenges. Since our institute is the main base of this project, we have been making our best for the realization in the near future.
　12 years have passed since the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011. We will contribute our efforts to the reconstruction through material science and technology, as well as to educate researchers and engineers contribute to the nation. We will proceed further in the field of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials.

April 2023,
Director Masami Terauchi