K Saito - Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan

In modern society science and technology are so pervasive that the experts are expected by the public to communicate how to deal with such problems as related to science and technology. However the Great East Japan Earthquake has not only made us devastatingly tremendous damages, but brought to light the failure to function adequately science and technology communication. In this paper I will present some suggestions on how to improve this situation. Since the Earthquake hit Japan there have been many trials on communicating scientific knowledge and skills to the public by scientists, engineers and their communicators. Among them our division in Hokkaido University which provides an educational program for science and technology communicators has made relevant activities. In time of the nuclear accident we firstly published an electronic book which explains plainly radioactivity for ordinary people and held a series of symposia on the future energy policy. In our educational program there is a project class in which the students produce a public relations’ magazine of our university under the supervision of us. They interviewed mainly several professors majoring in engineering, and have made such magazine as mainly deals with problems on the Earthquake disaster, to be issued on February 2012. Generally speaking these activities have been appraised by the public, but we had further tasks for better communication in science and technology. I will point out several challenges and suggest some improvements at the front of such big disaster and dysfunction of communication in science and technology

science, technology, communication, university, earthquake