I spent last week in Japan, leading the Canadian contingent at a meeting of an international research network that focuses on neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. The University of Ottawa is a key member of the research network, which also includes outstanding scientists from the National Research Council, IBM Canada, and other high-tech companies in Canada and Germany. The principal researchers at the University of Ottawa are Dr. William Staines and Dr. Anthony Krantis of our Centre for Research in Biopharmaceuticals and Biotechnology (CRBB).

We met last week with Japanese government ministries, industry leaders and our research partners. We visited Shiga University of Medical Science and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology. At Shiga, I signed a Memorandum of Understanding between our two universities that provides, among other things, student mobility through exchanges. For the moment, the agreement applies only to medical students, but it may be broadened in the future to include nursing and other health sciences.

I was enormously impressed by the world-class quality of the work being done by Dr. Krantis and his colleagues at the CRBB. They are truly creating hope in the urgent struggle to find better methods of diagnosis and treatment for diseases of the brain. Given Canada's current demographics (including your rapidly aging President…) it is projected that the burden of neurodegenerative disease in the coming years will be very substantial. It is all the more important that our scientists find better ways to detect and manage those diseases and eventually perhaps even to cure them.