It could take more than a year for things to return to normal at Japanese universities after the March earthquake and tsunami. The damage of universities in eastern Japan may be as high as ¥90 billion ($1.1 billion). Engineering school Tohoku University endured ¥77 billion in damage. Twenty-eight buildings require reconstruction. The government has created a fund of ¥3 million per lab to help reconstruction efforts at the university, where 7,000 pieces of lab equipment were destroyed. Forty labs at the university will each receive an additional ¥5 million from the Japan Science and Technology Agency. The labs are almost ready to reopen and researchers should be able to resume activities there soon. Tsukuba University is estimated to have sustained ¥7 billion in damages. Ishinomaki Senshu University did not suffer extreme damage. Offers for short-term employment were extended to many Japanese researchers by European institutes, but most were declined so that the researchers could focus their energies on rebuilding their labs.

Source: Royal Society of Chemistry