Outline

About our Global COE program

Our G-COE group is built on the wealth of world-class research in nanomaterials, soft materials, opto-electronic materials and environmental materials at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. The G-COE aims to establish a world-class center in Asia for materials science and engineering under new concepts in education and research.

Our mission is as follows:

1. Education program
   • Create a new graduate education program providing basic concepts common in all the traditional and cutting-edge aspects of materials science and engineering;
   • Cultivate a viewpoint to grasp both technological and economic factors of new materials;
   • Train the ability to find the key problem for a breakthrough;
   • Promote English presentation and communication skills;
   • Provide global top-level educational classes with graduate students selected both from Japan and overseas (mainly Asian) countries.
2. Supporting young talented students and researchers
   • Provide scholarships for the Japanese and overseas students admitted to our G-COE graduate education program;
   • Establish financial support for the students to join international conferences and to study abroad;
   • Support young talented researchers financially.
3. World center for the education and research in materials science and engineering
   • Publish a new standard textbook under the concepts described above for materials science and engineering in English;
   • Establish the publication of a new, top-level Asian journal for materials science and engineering;
   • Hold regular world-class symposia for materials science and engineering in Asia;
   • Promote global exchanges between students and researchers in materials science and engineering.

Objectives, needs/importance and prospective impacts of the COE establishment

1. Disciplines of the Proposed COE

Innovation in materials technology is indispensable not only to solving worldwide problems concerning the environment and energy, but also to continuous development of Japan's industry by preventing hollowing-out due to a shift of production bases to other Asian countries. In order to truly contribute to solving global problems in the 21st century from the standpoint of “material innovation,” our G-COE will cover a wide range of research fields. Our contributions will include the following:

1) Material processing innovation for reducing the energy and environmental load
2) Material production innovation for producing basic functional materials
3) Nanomaterials design innovation based on nanotechnology
4) Molecular and liquid crystal based optoelectronics innovation
5) Transparent oxide electronics innovation aimed at establishing a new industry
6) Energy conversion materials innovation
7) Management of intellectual properties relating to material innovations with industries

2. Concepts and Objectives of the COE plan

(1) Concept of the G-COE establishment plan

From a global perspective, the materials group at the Tokyo Institute of Technology has produced excellent research achievements in the field of materials science, such as the discovery of inorganic electrides, functional development of banana-shaped liquid crystals, rubber production process from natural sulfur resources, and development of bioethanol. Such high-impact achievements in research and education, as well as top-level facilities and equipment owned by the Institute, compare favorably with leading universities in the United States and Europe. We will establish a G-COE founded on the existing research infrastructure for the fields of nanomaterials, soft materials, photo-functional and electro-functional materials, and environment-responsive materials. The G-COE will provide world-leading, cutting-edge materials science and technology through the G-COE doctoral course, through support systems for young assistant professors and post-doctoral fellows, through education and research carried out with an international perspective together with Asian countries to encourage material industries, and through interactive exchange of human resources.

(2) Objective of establishing the G-COE

As part of the 21st Century COE Program, the materials group at the Tokyo Institute of Technology has successfully fostered doctoral graduates with good business sense in materials engineering. This has been achieved by launching two doctoral courses known as the Project Management (PM) course and the Nanomaterial Initiative (NI) course. Based on these achievements, our G-COE will further aim to strengthen the advantages of these two courses.

i) We will establish a new G-COE educational doctoral course by combining parts of the two existing courses. In this way, we will be able to achieve the following:

• By expanding the business-sense education provided as part of the 21st Century COE Program, we will provide education that allows one to define problems in an original manner based on marketing research skills and to accurately comprehend current needs in technological and economical issues. In this way, we will be able to foster individuals capable of making breakthroughs in technology and developing innovative materials that are promising and highly valuable.
• We will establish a cross-disciplinary educational curriculum to develop students' knowledge and academic abilities, which are the essence of a solid understanding and further advancement at the cutting-edge of materials science.
• We will provide education to develop an international perspective and international communication skills required for human resources that are capable of truly leading the world in materials science.

ii) We will encourage students to develop international awareness, build a network of personal connections, and improve their communication skills. We will do so by accepting overseas students from world-leading universities and research institutions in other Asian countries, such as China and Korea, which are geographically close to Japan, so that a substantial number of the students enrolled in the G-COE doctoral course will be from overseas. In this way, the students entering our doctoral course in materials science will be able to study in an international environment for four years.

iii) The research results on nanomaterials, soft materials, optoelectronic materials, and environment-responsive materials achieved by students enrolled in the G-COE doctoral course will be further developed into industrial technologies with the cooperation of the National Institute of Materials Science (NIMS) and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST).