| Panel Discussion |
 |
|
|
 |
 |
|
Nishimura:
I would like to ask Akasaki-san one question. When you selected Gallium Nitride (GaN) how much did you have the blue light emitting diode as a final target, as a final application value in your mind? At that time, selecting GaN was a risky selection in one sense because the possibility of success was uncertain. To what extent did you have in mind the realization of a blue light emitting diode?
Akasaki:
I had a relatively strong intention to realize blue light emitting diode. Before GaN, I studied Aluminum Nitride (AlN) from 1966 and researched light emission phenomena. The band gap of AlN is quite large, larger than that of diamond, and so almost no current flows whatever method you use. I decided that it was not so interesting and changed to research its brother, GaN. I was already doing research of red and green light emitting diodes, so naturally I targeted the blue light emitting diode, that no one could make, when I started GaN research. As I said in the morning session, I had blue light emission as well as the PN junction problem in my mind from the beginning.
Nishimura:
Thank you very much Akasaki-san. Nakamura-san, your selecting GaN is a little different; I thought that, in one sense, you were not so concerned about whether you could make it or not. Please comment.
Nakamura:
Well, I did not expect "Entrepreneurship" at all. I had no confidence that I would be able to make it. I started it just to write a paper and I wanted to challenge the students at Florida University. So I never thought I could make the blue light emitting diode. After I started, naturally I got into the research and finally I made it. So it was done by chance. After I started, I liked research, I got into it, and the result came naturally. I had no such confidence when I started.
Nishimura:
It is interesting, the person who had no confidence made the world's first and best blue light emitting diode. Amano-san, did you think you wanted to do your research to contribute to society when you selected the theme of your graduation thesis. I think you said so in your morning remarks. In the case of blue light emitting diode, it is clear it will contribute to people if it is completed, however it is very difficult. Did you have such situation in your mind when you were an undergraduate student?
Amano:
Put formally, it was "contribution to the people," but put simply it was the "spirit of good service." It was cheering myself up by cheering everybody up, and it is absolutely necessary to want to raise one's own profile. I decided my theme from these two points.
Nisimura:
I want to cover a relatively large subject, considering the remaining time. The two Awardees in the life science application field have a common point - the DNA micro array. One wants to diffuse scientific knowledge by opening it on the Internet for everybody to access it. I do not want to say two are in opposition but, in contrast, Foder-san established a venture by himself and offers products as business. In the market mechanism, resources are needed for research and development, for creating "knowledge," or for continuing research and development from initial results. This resource can only be provided by investment - the source of which is profit in a market mechanism. So a venture makes a profit, and then re-invests some of that profit in research and development. Developing a venture by such a process is a fundamental mechanism of capitalism, I think. On the other hand, in the case of science, money is supplied through the public sector in many cases. In the end, this money is also produced by the mechanism of capitalism. Anyway, in the case of science supported by public money, some people think knowledge should be diffused by a different mechanism than the market mechanism. This has been a point of discussion concerning the Takeda Award form the very beginning. The people who contributed to Linux, TRON and GNU were awarded the 2001 Takeda Award in the Information and Electronics application field. Those people distributed their development results as free products. Finally, in the case of Linux, a very good operating system was developed by many volunteer developers in an open and free mechanism. Those results drive people in the market mechanism to create businesses such as system development or system support services using that operating system. In the case of Life Science application field, people who create a venture have success in sequencing faster than international teams, and offer sequenced data as a pay service. Earlier we listened to comments from two panelists - I now want invite questions or comments from floor. This is a very interesting area and I think some consensus will be reached after some twists and turns. I also think similar developments are likely to happen in various field. Foder-san, please comment.
Fodor:
I think I might comment just a little bit. There are a couple of important points included in your general comments. One is this issue of public sequence databases. And there's an aspect here that we're all talking about which is really human knowledge. We have certainly taken the philosophy that we should support and in fact propagate this idea of public access to genetic information. In fact, we have gone so far as to have really taken a position as a company (which has not always brought us favor with a lot of the other biotech companies), that we do not believe that genetic information itself should be patentable. The tools themselves are focused on getting to the genetic answers and trying to generate genetic knowledge. In that regard, even if you look at the differences between what Dr. Brown did and what Affymetrix did, both of these efforts are really aimed at getting at scientific discoveries and getting them out to the public. What they have in common is a philosophy of having very broad and open access. I think the differences come in terms of technology development. I think in the case of the academic center - Dr. Brown - his philosophy has been to use this technology and teach people. Affymetrix has gone towards a commercialization strategy, of building tools and making them available. Of course we probably have different objectives, but one that is overriding the others is to generate knowledge that everybody can use. In the Affymetrix case the way that we do this is to create a company - to create an entrepreneurial activity - that creates jobs for people. We then need to focus on regulatory issues around supplying tools to the drug discovery process, into the regulatory-approved diagnostics community and so on. These entrepreneurial activities have slightly different requirements. Very interestingly though, in the philosophical front end part, the academic effort and ours are both really targeted towards this quest for knowledge about the human genome and the human condition.
|
|
|
