Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST) is a Japanese national university* located in Kansai Science City, a border region between Nara, Osaka, and Kyoto. Founded in 1991, NAIST consists solely of graduate schools in three integrated areas: information science, biological sciences, and materials science. The university's objectives are to conduct cutting-edge research in frontier areas and train students to become tomorrow's science and technology leaders.
NAIST was established in 1991 as a new type of national graduate school, one without undergraduate programs, with three graduate schools focusing on advancing information, biological, and materials sciences, central to our society in the 21st century. Since that time, we have promoted internationally-recognized research in these three fields and their interdisciplinary fusion areas as an 'institution for experimenting' while effectively carrying out human resource development through a highly-organized graduate school education curriculum results of this research. To this date, NAIST has sent 7,600 master's and 1,500 doctoral program graduates into society, and they are active as researchers and engineers throughout various fields in the world. Additionally, we have sent out numerous young researchers who studied and trained at NAIST to significant universities around Japan as professors and associate professors. This contribution to education and research at the forefront of science and technology is a distinguishing feature of NAIST's activities.
Looking back at the 25 years of education and research that has been performed since NAIST's beginnings, we can see that the institute's activities have been highly evaluated, not only through concrete statistics but also through the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology's (MEXT) national institution education and research achievement evaluations. For example, NAIST was chosen by MEXT as one of 22 institutions to participate in the Program for Promoting the Enhancement of Research Universities, which began in 2013 to strengthen further the research prowess of institutions with considerable achievements. Furthermore, in 2014 the institute was chosen along with 36 other institutions to participate in the Top Global University Project, which actively supports institutions that lead internationalization within Japan.
Today, globalization is being called for across all areas of society. Globalization on our campus is being carried out through the support of these two projects. Collaboration in both education and research with prominent institutions from around the globe is being enhanced. Concerning education, NAIST has established international offices in Indonesia and Thailand to serve as collaborative centers. More than 20% of NAIST's student population consists of students from diverse areas and countries. We plan to encourage growth in the international population further to promote development in our global community. Concerning research, NAIST is strengthening its strategic collaborative pursuits with North American, European, and other institutions. Our professors have established and are leading two satellite laboratories at foreign institutes (France and USA). Three collaborative research laboratories have been established at NAIST and are being led by foreign institutions (USA, France, Canada) faculty, and we are beginning collaborative research involving students. Along with these developments, NAIST is sending young researchers abroad for one-year research and education opportunities to encourage and facilitate their global development and activities.
Collaboration with private industry and other non-academic institutions is also a significant priority. NAIST is collaborating strategically with the industry aiming at innovation creation to determine future issues that society will face aggressive research efforts at solving these individual issues. We are currently working with three corporations in Collaborative Research toward Future Innovation projects to create new collaborative research approaches to develop new approaches for interdisciplinary fusion fields.
Science and technology are currently facing a revolutionary era. At NAIST, we have focused on world-leading research in the three fields of information, biological, and materials sciences, and their interdisciplinary areas, and focused on the production of talented researchers and engineers during the 25 years since establishment, while also continuously redefining what the 'forefront of science and technology' is during that same time, In order to create an education and research organization that can respond flexibly to that evolving forefront of science and technology, NAIST has shifted to a one graduate school system to stress the enhancement of interdisciplinary education in April 2018. With this shift, in addition to the 'Program in Information Science and Engineering,' 'Program in Biological Sciences' and the 'Program in Materials Science and Engineering' which correspond to the education and curriculum of the three previous graduate schools, the 'Program in Computational Biology,' 'Program in Bionanotechnology,' 'Program in Intelligent Cyber-Physical Systems,' and the 'Program in Data Sciences' have been established as interdisciplinary educational programs. In our pursuit of a growing global presence, this shift to one graduate school is the enormous challenge NAIST has faced since its establishment.
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