From July 8 to 9, East Asia ALMA held a two-day workshop titled “EA ALMA Development Workshop” at the NAOJ Mitaka campus. The workshop was attended by 69 researchers from Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea to discuss future enhancement of ALMA.

ALMA has just started its full operations, but it needs continued upgrading of observation instruments to lead astronomy over the next 20 to 30 years. In the workshop, there were a presentation on the feasibility of a new frequency band higher than Band 10 and the development progress report of the Band 1 receiver (35 to 50 GHz) led by Taiwan, as well as the discussion on new capabilities of ALMA which will be essential in the future to contribute to new astronomy in the 2020’s. They actively discussed wide ranging topics such as further improvement of resolution, expansion of observing frequency range, and wider field of view to investigate details of the formation of stars, the region around a massive black hole, and the birth of planets in the universe.