The 3rd Cherry Blossom Symposium

Invitation

The organizing committee welcomes you to the 3rd Cherry Blossom Symposium and to Hamamatsu city, Japan. The Cherry Blossom Symposium is named from an international one held in the season of cherry blossoms. It will focus on laboratory automation and lobotics, especially on clinical laboratory automation. In the world, big conferences on laboratory automation are held in the USA and Europe. In Asia, however, there had been no such conferences before 1998. Professor Emeritus Sasaki gave the 1st Cherry Blossom Symposium in 1998, professor Tadano gave the 2nd in 2000, and then we will hold the 3rd next year. We hope this international conference on (clinical) laboratory automation will spread to all of Japan, Asian countries and worldwide.

The season of cherry blossoms will come to Hamamatsu from the end of March to the first of April. We determined that the conference would be held on April 3rd to 5th at Hamamatsu Meitetsu Hotel. Hamamatsu City is located at the middle part of Honshu. Travel time is just one and a half hour both from Osaka (Kyoto) and Tokyo by Shinkansen (bullet train).
Ancient Japan is still visible in the Hamamatsu castle, which was built by Ieyasu Tokugawa, a founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate, about 400 years ago. Today’s Hamamatsu is famous for its motorcycles industries. Honda, Yamaha and Suzuki companies were established here in the 1940’s, and now produce 60% of all Japanese motorcycles. Hamamatsu Photonics, a photon device company, produces 95% of the photomultipliers used in the world.

The upcoming conference will focus not only on laboratory automation but also on miniaturization of laboratory systems and microarray techniques. The scientific program is now proceeding, but we can show the tentative program. Two plenary lectures will be opened from Professor Shimizu, who is leading Genome Project in Japan, and from Professor Felder, who is a chair of the Association for American Laboratory Automation. The exhibition area will be prepared for laboratory automation equipment, software, system and brand-new information. Luncheon seminars will be opened from our sponsors. Poster presentation is welcome from all of the participants.

We believe that you will enjoy cherry blossoms, scientific programs and this symposium. We are looking forward to seeing you at Hamamatsu in next April.

Takashi Kanno M.D. & PhD.

Masato Maekawa M.D. & PhD.

Hamamatsu University, School of Medicine.