Book excerpt: I am honored to chair this International Workshop on Functionally st Graded Materials in the 21 Century: A Workshop on Trends and Forecasts, and would like to first express my sincere gratitude to everyone participating. The Mechanical Engineering Laboratory and the Japan International Science and Technology Exchange Center (JISTEC) have co-organized this workshop with the sponsorship of the Science and Technology Agency of Japan and the cooperation of the Association of Mechanical Technology. This workshop is an international conference to focus on functionally graded materials and the aim is to provide an overview of the present global technical trends and the future development of functionally graded materials over the next 10 years. I am very happy to see many researchers meeting together here - including seven researchers invited from abroad. During the three-day oral sessions, 36 research reports will be presented, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who is very anxious to hear and participate in the upcoming interesting discussions. At present, the Mechanical Engineering Laboratory is conducting fundamental and ground-breaking research in such major areas as materials science and technology, bioengineering, information & system science, advanced machine technology, energy technology, manufacturing technology and robotics. In particular, we consider research on materials science and technology to have the highest priority for the 21st century. and since 1996 have participated in the US-Japan joint research project, Precompetitive Processing and Characterization of Functionally Graded Materials.