On December 12, 2011, we received guests from the Universite de Paul Sabatier (UPS). The delegation consisted of Vice-rector Juan Martinez-Vega, Prof. Luis Farinas, Prof. Olivier　Simonin, Prof. Olivier　Cuvillier, Prof. Isabelle Sasaki, Prof. Remi Chauvin and Dr. Pierre Destruel from the Embassy of France in Japan.

NAIST concluded an exchange agreement with UPS in 2007 and has conducted several activities including student exchange, mainly between the Graduate School of Material Science and UPS. Deepening our relationship was one of the main purposes of this visit. President Isogai, the executive directors and the deans of the Graduate Schools all participated and both universities and their research were introduced. After that, the delegates visited the facilities and laboratories of their research fields. Regarding biological sciences research, Dr. Cuvillier gave a lecture titled, "Sphingosine 1-phosphate as a target for cancer therapy" in a Global COE seminar.

In this visit, we had the opportunity to convey our rich education and research environment and we hope our relationship will develop further.