On May 21st, 2015, President Naotake Ogasawara signed a Cooperation Agreement with President Rick Ede, Unitec Institute of Technology, New Zealand, to initiate a double degree program between Graduate School of Information Science, NAIST, and Department of Computing and Information Technology, Unitec.

NAIST delegates, President Naotake Ogasawara together with Prof. Tsukasa Ogasawara, Dean and Prof. Kazushi Ikeda, Graduate School of Information Science paid a courtesy visit to Unitec. While there, they attended the signing ceremony, which was held in a traditional manner at the Marae, a historical building of Maori tribes in New Zealand, hosted by Department Head, Prof. Hossein Sarrafzadeh, and Prof. Shaoning Paul Pang, Department of Computing and Information Technology, Unitec.

Associate Prof. Yuki Kadobayashi and Prof. Kazushi Ikeda, Graduate School of Information Science, NAIST, have been in research collaboration with researchers at Unitec which lead to an academic exchange agreement in March 2012. Subsequently, Presidents of both institutions signed in July 2012 a memorandum of understanding for continued efforts towards establishment of a double degree program, and finally sealed the Cooperation Agreement this time.

After the ceremony, the NAIST delegates visited the cyber security room, as well as Concentrix and IBM on Unitec campus, where NAIST students are undertaking their internship. Following the campus tour, the NAIST and Unitec Presidents had discussions to promote future collaborations. On the following day, a commemorative joint mini-workshop with faculty members from other New Zealand universities was held, and NAIST and Unitec gave presentations to introduce their research activities.