10th Anniversary
Ceremony and Lectures
Tokyo
December 1998

Events commemorating the 10th anniversary of the HFSP started in December 1998 in Toyko.

The official 10th Anniversary Ceremony celebrated the founding of the Program and its achievements. It was held at Mita House, Tokyo (an official facility of the Japanese Government).

Awards were presented to the following members of the Japanese political and scientific establishment, who played key roles in initiating the HFSP:

Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone
Member of the House of Representatives

Prof. Michio Okamoto
President of Kyoto University of Art and Design

Prof. Masao Ito
Head of the RIKEN Brain Science Institute

Prof. Akiyoshi Wada
Head of the RIKEN Genomic Sciences Center

Ambassador Hiromichi Miyazaki
First President of the HFSP

The ceremony also included a keynote speech by Prime Minister Nakasone and addresses by two HFSP grant awardees who have since been awarded Nobel Prizes, Prof. Stanley Prusiner, University of California, San Francisco, USA (Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine, 1997) and Prof. John Walker, Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular biology, Cambridge, UK (Nobel Prize for Chemistry, 1997)

In addition, two 10th Anniversary Scientific Lectures were given:

Prof. Stanley Prusiner
Structural biology and molecular genetics of prions causing neurodegenerative diseases

Prof. John Walker
How ATP is made