SPring-8, the large synchrotron radiation facility

The International Conference on SAS has been held every three (or four years) since 1965. In this conference, researchers in various scientific fields such as physics, chemistry, biology, materials sciences, and engineering get together to discuss and explore the unique capabilities, needs, and opportunities of SAS for structure determination of various systems from atomic or molecular to mesoscopic scales. Systems to be studied by SAS of X-rays and Neutrons extend over a quite wide range; metals, ceramics, biomolecules, and soft matter such as polymers, liquid crystals, colloids, membranes, and surfactants. Therefore, this conference is highly interdisciplinary by nature. In this conference, we are going to attempt to bring speakers and participants in various fields to meet in the same conference rooms to present and discuss their SAS studies, as a common but most important keyword among others, beyond their special fields. We are also going to highlight some topical sessions on researches; for example, researches concerning 1) dynamics and kinetics, 2) hierarchy structures studied with a wide range of momentum transfer, 3) novel techniques concerning with optics, detectors, microbeam, and contrast variation, 4) experiments under extreme ambient conditions, and 5) open-nonequilibrium systems under various external fields. In addition, as this is the first opportunity of SAS conference to be held in Asia, we wish to take advantage of this opportunity to promote SAS activities in Asian and Oceanian region as well as in Japan.