Kaoru Yokoya

As Fumihiko Takasaki steps down as the Asian Regional Director of the International Linear Collider to become the director of the Institute of Particle and Nuclear Studies at KEK, he also steps down as the head of the Linear Collider Promotion Office, or LC Office, at KEK. His successor at the LC Office is Kaoru Yokoya, an accelerator physicist who has been working for the linear collider for more than twenty years.

"The main role of the LC Office is to determine and coordinate the linear collider program at KEK," says Yokoya. The task includes optimization and monitoring of the LC-related R&D programs at KEK, budget over sighting, coordination of participation by KEK members in GDE efforts including overseas trips, and reporting to the directorate and executive meetings at KEK.

Yokoya also points out that there is an international aspect of the office activities. With the initiative of Mitsuaki Nozaki who became the GDE Asian Regional Director starting this April 2006, the LC office handles both domestic and international issues on the ILC. "Both Nozaki and I work as members of the GDE Executive Committee,” Yokoya says. "While Nozaki is responsible for acting as the pipeline between the GDE Executive Committee and the Asian Regional Team, I am mainly responsible with respect to the KEK team whose work cannot go without international collaborations. The two of us will work very closely together in whatever way will be suitable at each moment."

Yokoya notes the diverse situations surrounding the Asian research institutes. "While we have many enthusiastic Asian colleagues working for the ILC, some laboratories in the Asian region do not or cannot consider the ILC as their primary focus of their research program for various reasons.  Therefore, in some cases, we try to stay not too project-centric in formalities, yet strongly encourage involvement of talented human resources from Asian countries in as much as they can help push forward the ILC design and development. Collaboration for ILC R&D would help build up the technologies for many kinds of accelerators at their home institutes eventually."

Prior to engaging in the linear collider R&D, Yokoya had been working for beam dynamics and the design of TRISTAN. Around 1984, he became involved in the development of the Linear Collider as a grass root project. Three years later, the project became international with collaboration between the United States and Japan. "It is my mission to increase the Japanese contributions to the ILC. I try to get more focus on the ILC in order to obtain not only financial resources but also human resources."

Yokoya continues, "It is my dream to bring the ILC to Japan. Even if it would turn out not to be the case, I still want to make sure that the Japanese presence and contributions are visible to the world."

Yokoya used to enjoy reading books about history and orient literature on his holidays (not physics!). The acronyms of the simulation codes that Yokoya developed in the past, namely, "ABEL" and "CAIN" are indicative of his interests in the human culture and history which go well beyond the non-linear beam dynamics or emittance controls. "Unfortunately I'm too busy now to read even a word on those subjects," Yokoya says.

-- Youhei Morita and Nobuko Kobayashi