Message from the Acting Director

WPI-SKCM² is an international research center dedicated to creating novel materials and functionalities based on chirality and topology, with knotted structures (chiral knots) ubiquitously found in nature and matter serving as its central concept. By integrating physics, chemistry, and mathematics, the center has advanced a hierarchical understanding that connects microscopic quantum states to molecular and network structures, and ultimately to macroscopic properties and functionalities.

Since October of last year, I have been serving as Acting Director of the center, overseeing its management and strategic development. Currently, we are promoting the construction of a flagship project that implements, across the entire center, a research cycle in which the geometric and topological characteristics inherent in knotted structures are “visualized and quantified,” and subsequently used to “design, create, and generate functionalities.”

While strengthening the stability of our research framework and expanding international collaborations, we aim to create new academic value that contributes to a sustainable society through strategic management encompassing developments toward nonequilibrium systems, metamaterials, and eventual social implementation.

Akio Kimura, Acting Director, WPI‑SKCM²