Jonathan Dorfan, a renowned Stanford University physicist, has been appointed by the Japanese government to head a new public science university in Japan’s southernmost prefecture, reports the Nikkei newspaper. The government hopes that putting Mr. Dorfan in charge of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology will improve its academic profile and help make it into a world-class international graduate school. The institute is due to open in 2012. A particle physicist and former director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Mr. Dorfan is a fellow of the American Physical Society.