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International forum on science, technology in society opening in Kyoto

Leading the Russian delegation to Kyoto is Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich

KYOTO, October 1. /TASS/. Science and Technology in Society (STS) international forum opens on Sunday in Kyoto, the capital of Japan in olden times. The event will once again bring together more than 1,500 scientists, businessmen, politicians, and public personalities from over 150 countries, including Russia.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is expected to speak at the opening ceremony alongside with Koji Omi, the founder of the forum who held governmental posts three times, including that of the finance minister.

Leading the Russian delegation to Kyoto is Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich.

For the fourteenth time in a row, the forum will become a floor for contacts and discussions involving the greatest minds of our times and the cream of business elites. The synergy of science, technologies and up-to-date business preordains the future of humankind that will have no room for an environment of omnipotent competition, Koji Omi said on quite a number of occasions.

Beside Shinzo Abe, the Japanese government will be represented by the Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Hiroshige Seko, who supervises, among other things, the promotion of economic relations with Russia.

Standing at the head of the delegation of Japan Business Federation (Keidanren) is its Chairman, Sadayuki Sakakibara. Nobel Prize winning stem cell researcher Shinya Yamanaka is going to take part in the forum a yet another time, too.

Russia’s representation at the Kyoto forum seems to be more modest this time than it was previously. Anatoly Chubais, the CEO of the Russian state corporation Rosnano who was a cochairman of STS over many years, is not attending it this year.

Chubais’s advisor Sergei Kalyuzhny has come to Kyoto instead of him. Dr. Igor Krichever, an acclaimed Russian mathematician who heads the Center for Prospective Research at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology [Skoltech] will address the plenary session with a report on the diplomacy of science and technology and international cooperation.

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