The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST; President: Tamotsu Nomakuchi), the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS; President: Teruo Kishi), and the University of Tsukuba (President: Nobuhiro Yamada) have agreed to form a world-class nanotechnology research and development center in Tsukuba City, which is to be called the “Tsukuba Innovation Arena [TIA] nano,” and in cooperation with the Committee on Industrial Technology (Joint Chairman: Ryoji Chubachi) of Nippon Keidanren (Japan Business Federation), will establish an “Administrative High Council for the Tsukuba Innovation Arena” as an organization for promoting the project.
The facilities that will form the core of nanotechnology research and development will be constructed on the campuses of AIST and NIMS, which are located in Tsukuba City, using supplementary budgets of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) for fiscal years 2008 and 2009, amounting to approximately \36 billion ($375 million). Up to now, AIST, NIMS, and the University of Tsukuba had conducted research and development on the element technologies of nanotechnology independently. By creating these new core facilities and promoting cooperation among the three institutions, this project will enable interdisciplinary research on technologies in different fields desired by private businesses.
The mission of the above-mentioned “Administrative High Council” will be to assess the demand for research and development in industry and promote close cooperation between materials research and device research so as to enable effect use of the project’s core facilities, and to study the development of R&D human resources, centering on graduate schools, with the participation of Japan’s leading universities.
By creating this Tsukuba Innovation Arena, the partner institutions hope to provide support which will enable early industrial commercialization of the results of nanotechnology research in Japan, and the supply of those products to the market.
