IBS President's Congratulatory Remarks at Italian Research Day
in the World Reception

I would like to extend my sincere congratulations to the Italian Embassy for hosting this reception to celebrate Italian researchers at home and abroad.

Special thanks to His Excellency Ambassador Marco della Seta and Professor Francesco Canganella, the Science and Technology Counsellor for inviting me to participate in this newly established day. I am honored to be here with you today.

I was asked by the organizers to say a few words about IBS, the Institute for Basic Science. IBS was established in 2011 to promote and secure creative knowledge for future generations through world-class research in the basic sciences.

The four core principles of IBS are excellence, openness, autonomy, and creativity. With the vision of Making Discoveries for Humanity and Society, IBS conducts large-scale, convergent, and massive equipment-based research in basic science that is difficult to be carried out by universities.

Funded by taxpayer money, the output of research is to help not a private company, but science in general, so all people may benefit. In order for the research to benefit a vast number of people, we require a diversity of researchers to reap the best ideas.

We currently have bilateral cooperation between IBS and Italian institutions after signing MOUs with INFN, National Institute for Nuclear Physics and SISSA, International School for Advanced Studies. Moreover, this October we are going to have a bilateral symposium with Italian institutions on underground physics at the Italian-Korean Symposium.

The world is more global than ever before and the flux of researchers to all corners of the globe allows new possibilities for the spread of information and the gleaning of new knowledge. I am truly grateful for sharing your best and brightest with the rest of us.

Italian researchers in Korea are benefiting not only Korea, and not only Italy, but the whole of science. Su questo non ci piove! (no doubt about it) Thank you very much!