Organization

The IPMU Director is appointed by the President of the University of Tokyo and reports directly to the President. The Director has a complete authority of making a wide range of decisions including proposing recruitment of the Principal Investigators to the President, and appointing other research staffs and administrative staffs. The Director is assisted by the two Deputy Directors and the Administrative Director. They hold the Executive Board Meeting (EBM) regularly to ensure smooth operation of the Institute. The EBM has direct access to the Office of the President for consultations on both scientific and administrative matters.

The Scientific advisory Committee (SAC) gives advice to the Director on hiring scientific staffs and setting scientific strategies. The members consist of two Deputy Directors and five among IPMU's eighteen Principal Investigators, all appointed by the Director. The External Advisory Committee (EAC), appointed by the University President, reviews annually the scientific achievement and activities of the Institute and advises the President on scientific priorities and the research activities to keep the Institute stay on the course of their objectives.

IPMU has rather unique approach in organizing the research objectives, where the world's leading scientists in their research fields are appointed as the Principal Investigators. There are eighteen of them at the moment and they are affiliated to IPMU and other departments in the Host Institution (U of Tokyo) as well as other institutions. The Principal Investigators have a large autonomy in the research they conduct. They can make a proposal to the Director to hire research staffs at IPMU to help their research. The Director's approval on the proposed appointments will reflect the scientific vision and priorities set by the Director, who may consult the SAC as needed.

The administrative staff is an integral part of the Institute. Providing the best possible environment to the researchers in the Institute is essentially important for the IPMU's mission. This part is headed by the Administrative Director. Its function also enables the Director to spend more time to consider the Institute at large and focus on the direction of the research.

Scientific Advisory Committee Members (2009)

  • T. Kohno
  • H. Ooguri
  • K. Saito
  • D. Spergel
  • T. Yanagida

External Advisory Committee Members (2009)

  • J. Ellis (CERN)
  • M. Gonokami (U of Tokyo)
  • N. Kaifu (NAOJ)
  • Y.K. Kim (Fermilab/U of Chicago)
  • S. Kojima (Tokyo Tech)
  • D. Morrison (UC Santa Barbara)
  • R. Peccei (UCLA; Chair)
  • S. Kahn (SLAC/Stanford U)
  • N. Reshetikhin (UC Berkeley)

Host Institute (Univ. of Tokyo)

Collaborating Institutions

Experimental Projects

SUBARU telescope

measures a large-scale three-dimensional structure of the universe by surveying distant galaxies. These data are used to determine the distribution of Dark Matter, which is needed to hold galaxies together, and to explore Dark Energy, which makes up 73% of the universe. "SuMIRe" project (SUBARU Measurement of Image and Redshifts) builds a next generation wide-angle coverage camera and spectrometer for the observation of distributions and spectra of more than 30 million distant galaxies within a few years time scale, thus providing unbiased information about the history of expanding universe.

SuperKamiokande

measures the properties of neutrinos for understanding their role within ordinary matter and the origin of matter. It also explores the evolution of the universe by observing neutrinos coming from distant stars. Furthermore, it searches for decays of the proton, which has never been observed but is predicted to occur very rarely according to the Unification Theory. A small test experiment (EGADS) for detecting supernova relic neutrinos by enriching the 50,000 for water of SK with gadolinium is proceeding.

KamLAND

measures the properties of neutrinos for understanding their role within ordinary matter and the origin of matter. It also surveys neutrinos coming from inside the Earth and the Sun, to tell us something about their inner structure. Transformation of KamLAND into a huge neutrinoless double beta decay experiment by adding Xenon-136 to the detector volume is being tested.

XMASS

is a next-generation detector for directly detecting the Dark Matter that is thought to pervade our Milky Way galaxy. It has a vastly improved sensitivity compared with its predecessors, and hopes to go beyond simple detection of this mysterious Dark Matter to detailed measurement of its properties.

SUBARU telescope and LHC

generate large data sets of unprecedent scale. LHC (Large Hadron Collider) is the highest energy accelerator in the world. It creates a situation similar to the early universe in the laboratory. It searches for supersymmetry particles, some of which are Dark Matter candidates. It also searches for new phenomena such as the momentary formation of small black holes as well as the existence of extra dimensions (higher space dimensions that appear in the superstring theory).

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