Competing with the world at the cutting edge
NAIST is aiming to be an internationally competitive university.
We are striving to create a research center with a comprehensive perspective, integrating individual research achievements with collaboration between different fields and offering a globally flexible education for scientists and technologists. Here we introduce the ways in which NAIST is rising to meet these challenges.
Top Global University Project
In October 2014, NAIST was one of 37 universities selected to the Top Global University Project funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). For a period of ten years, MEXT will support outstanding universities in their efforts to reform institutional governance and collaborate with top universities worldwide in order to strengthen international competitiveness. Through the Top Global University Project, NAIST has committed to enhancing its international graduate courses by including a double degree scheme, developing a new model for graduate education based on (innovative, cutting-edge, epoch-making, world-class) research, reforming institutional governance and strategic agility, creating a campus environment that supports trans-disciplinary education and cultural diversity, and reorganizing its three graduate schools into a single entity toward establishing new, flexible research groups.
Previous programs at NAIST
Program for Promoting the Enhancement of Research Universities
In October 2013, NAIST was one of the 22 universities selected for inclusion in another prestigious MEXT initiative, the Program for Promoting the Enhancement of Research Universities, which aims to improve the research capabilities of universities and research institutions.
Through this program, NAIST continues to conduct frontier-opening research while expanding into new interdisciplinary fields in science and technology. With the establishment of a university-wide strategic research infrastructure, NAIST endeavors to leverage its resources to attain new research materials and facilities necessary for advanced research, to disseminate its achievements and human resources around the globe, and to further expand its global research and education network in order to contribute to the overall advancement of science and technology. Projects being supported through this program include young researcher and technology exchange programs, international researcher and technology exchange programs and the establishment of joint laboratories both domestically and abroad.
Global COE Program
The Global COE Program is a MEXT project, launched in 2007, to improve and enhance the educational and research functions of graduate schools, with the aim of training world-leading creative personnel and creating internationally competitive universities.
The Global Program for Frontier Biosciences, run by an integrated group from the laboratories of the Graduate School of Biological Sciences and the Bioinformatics and Genomics laboratories of the Graduate School of Information Science, has been selected as one of 13 centers in the life sciences field to continue from the 21st Century COE Program: Exploiting New Frontiers in Bioscience.
Program for Enhancing Systematic Education in Graduate Schools
The Program for Enhancing Systematic Education in Graduate Schools was launched in 2007 by MEXT, with the objective of making graduate school education more substantial by offering focused support for outstanding educational initiatives.
The Graduate Schools of Information Science and Biological Sciences were selected for this program in the same year, and the Graduate School of Materials Science was also selected in 2009.
Progressive Education Program for IT Specialist Training
The Progressive Education Program for IT Specialist Training, launched in 2007 by MEXT, aims to create educational centers for training world-recognized top-level personnel in the field of information security who will be able to achieve the world's safest IT society, by means of concentrating latent capacity across the divides between universities and between academia and industry, and by enhancing educational content and systems.
The program proposed by NAIST's Graduate School of Information Science was one of only two selected for this project nationwide.
Innovation System Improvement Project
The Innovation System Improvement Project (a program for promoting self-sustaining administration of universities through industry-academia-government collaboration) is intended to create an environment where universities can engage in self-sustaining industry-academia-government collaboration, by improving international or unique industry-academia-government collaboration and assigning coordinators for such collaboration programs, in order to effectively return the benefits of universities' research to society.
NAIST's Industry-Government-Academia Collaboration Group has been selected as one of 17 institutions across Japan to implement a project entitled "Improving the Global Industry-Government-Academia Collaboration System".
Botanical Science Research and Education Promotion Project
The Botanical Science Research and Education Promotion Project was inaugurated in 2010 with support from MEXT to promote graduate education in botanical science. Within the framework of this initiative, NAIST solicits research projects each year from graduate students throughout Japan and overseas, and assists with the implementation of selected outstanding projects, mainly in the form of funding and technical guidance.
NAIST aims to contribute to raising the level of botanical science domestically and abroad by offering opportunities for graduate students and young researchers to gather and exchange views, cultivating a thriving network of young botanical scientists.
JSPS-International Training Program (ITP)
The Graduate School of Materials Science is dedicated to education and research in the field of Biomaterials Science. The principle areas of research include the understanding of life and life cycles, drug discovery and development, and healthcare. The NAIST International Training Program (IPT) builds upon our significant international cooperative framework to create an outstanding international training network, specifically designed to enhance communication skills and develop international perspectives in research. The program was established in 2009 as part of the five-year researcher training course currently offered at the Graduate School of Materials Science, which has been designed to nurture students into confident, independent researchers.
