The Irago Conference 2017 held at UEC, Tokyo

The Irago Conference 2017 was held 1-2 November 2017 at the UEC, Tokyo Auditorium. This was the 7th in this series of conferences focused on providing a platform for networking between scientists, graduate students, and policy makers to interact and share ideas to find solutions for some the major issues of the 21st century.

This core theme of this year's conference was "Challenges in Materials Science", and the proceedings included 16 invited speakers; 5 contributed oral talks; short, 5 minute talks by the 9 participants of the Premium Poster Session; 17 talks during the lunch time Graduate Student Session; and 77 poster presentations. A total of 150 participants attended the conference over the two days including the invited speakers from Beijing, Germany, Italy, UK, Singapore, and Japan.

In addition to the scientists and graduate students, high students from Seiko Gakuin High School in Kanagawa Prefecture, also participated in the conference, giving a poster presentation and actively asking questions during the sessions.

During the evening of the 1st November, the participants moved to the Keio Plaza Hotel in Shinjuku, for the "AAAS Science Fall Meeting 2017／Irago Conference 2017 Evening Session". This session included talks by guests from MEXT, the headmaster of Seiko Gakuin High School, representatives from Science Magazine, and the director of a sake brewer from Akita who described the process of producing fine Japanese sake.

Irago Conference 2018 is schedule for 1-2 November 2018 at the UEC, Tokyo Auditorium.