Welcome Message from the Conference President

about a time for us to broaden our view beyond the conventional bounds of education and research in oral health science.

　International partnerships seem to provide practical strategies to diversify, share, and complement research and human resources, further making our endeavor more effective and facilitating to boost the level of our research up to the global standard. In recent years, much attention has been paid to international joint programs at the postgraduate level, such as joint degree programs. In this conference, we will share different experiences and discuss the potentials of such a new framework of international collaboration.

　Another important aspects highlighted here is concerned with multidisciplinary approaches that promote to shift the paradigms of dental science and technology, and hence significantly expand our possibilities. In such approaches, conventional dental science research is merged with state-of-the-art knowledge and technologies derived from other diverse areas, such as biotechnology, nanotechnology, bioinspired materials, biosensors, computer science, and information technology. Successful examples we had ever seen include digital dentistry by which classical design and fabrication procedures for dental prostheses have been replaced in part with a novel process, so-called CAD/CAM, having emerged from diverse technologies developed in computer science and mechanical/materials engineering.

　On behalf of the organizing committee, I hope that you will join us for a symphony of outstanding science and technology, and gain new prospects towards oral health science in the next generation.