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The
21st Century COE Program in FY 2002 |
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| In FY 2002, the
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports,
Science and Technology (MEXT) started
a new program called "The 21st
Century COE Program" to support
research in universities. The program
aims to form the 'Education and Research
base' with the world's highest standards
in each discipline. It also aims to
develop Japan's human resources by producing
individuals who will become future global
leaders, and create unique universities
with global competitiveness. 464 projects
were applied for in 5 categories of
research areas from Japanese national,
public and private universities, and
on September 30, the results of the
screening were announced as follows; |
 Life
sciences: 28 projects |
| Chemistry,
material sciences: 21 projects |
| Information
sciences, electrical and electronic
engineering: 20 projects |
| Humanities:
20 projects |
| Interdisciplinary,
combined fields, new disciplines:
24 projects |
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| From Kyudai, the following 4 projects
were accepted. |
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 Life
Science |
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Summary
Recent developments
in the life sciences has made
it possible to delineate the life
broadly covering from "genome"
to "population" with
common terms such as DNA. In addition,
it becomes more likely that life
is defined in an "integrated"
system. The aim of our program
includes the reorganization of
the current disciplines at the
level of "integrative life
sciences" and the education
and production of many talented
students. |
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Objectives
The explosive
development of the life sciences
in the 20th century has made it
possible to understand biological
phenomena at the level of the
"genome," "cell,"
"individual" and "population"
with common terms such as DNA.
In addition, it becomes more likely
that life is defined in an "integrated"
system. Our program aims to re-organize
the current life-science disciplines,
establish a top-grade reputed
center of "integrative life
sciences," and educate and
produce many talented students.
We will promote the program more
efficiently by setting up the
COE council, positioned over the
newly organized research disciplines.
The COE council
takes the responsibilities to
direct the program as a whole
by integrating respective plans,
such as the construction of the
infra-facilities and the implementation
of the inter-disciplinary collaborative
research projects and educational
courses. One of our goals in the
5-year program also includes the
unification with other graduate
programs, such as an application-oriented
graduate program on our campus. |
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| Chemistry,
Material Science |
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Summary
Based on the
great accomplishments and potential
in advanced molecular materials
research and education of the
division of applied chemistry
in Kyushu University, this COE
program attempts to create a new
concept of "molecular informatics,"
which will be a key science in
the 21st century. |
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Objectives
The development
of new materials and molecules
is essential for chemical and
materials research, and new molecules
greatly promote scientific and
technological innovation in many
fields. The division of applied
chemistry and the related groups
in Kyushu University have already
accomplished excellent research
in the chemistry of sophisticated
molecular materials. Building
on these foundations, this program
attempts to create a new science
of "molecular informatics"
which is a key concept for the
generation of artificial molecular
intelligence and molecular robotics
in the 21st century. |
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| Information
Sciences, Electrical and Electronic
Engineering |
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Summary
The objectives
of this program are to build up
a COE to be able to make proposals
useful to the reconstruction of
the social infrastructure in the
21st century from the field of
information science and electrical
engineering. |
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Objectives
The challenges
raised by the rapid progress of
the information-oriented society,
globalization and recognition
of problems in environment and
energy consumption call for the
reconstruction of the social infrastructure
in the 21st century. People are
looking forward to the introduction
of a new concept based on safety,
reliability, hard security, and
the recovery of humanity. In order
to develop this concept, the program
aims to build up a COE to be able
to make important proposals related
to the reconstruction of social
infrastructure in the 21st century
from the field of information
science and electrical engineering,
together with the System LSI Research
Center established in 2001. In
educational terms, we aim to produce
high-level researchers and engineers
who have all-round ability from
the development of electric devices
to the construction of large-scale
social systems. |
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| Humanities |
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Summary
The project
puts together Kyushu University's
human and intellectual resources
and aims to lay the foundation
of a new disciplinary framework
for understanding Asia that can
be called the "New Asian
studies." To accomplish the
objective, the project investigates
the long-term process through
which the regions of Asia, and
the Japanese archipelago (amongst
others), interacted and co-transformed.
The project is also designed to
produce a new generation of scholars
who can make significant contributions
to the understanding of the world
from the perspective grown and
rooted in Asia. |
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Objectives
The project
investigates interaction and the
formation of the identities of
various types and scales in East
Asia by examining the process
through which regional units in
East Asia, Japanese archipelago
amongst the others, interacted
and mutually transformed. The
task will be undertaken as an
interdisciplinary enterprise by
a term of specialists in Japanese
History, Asian History, Korean
History, Archaeology, Japanese
Language and Literature. A significant
objective of the project is to
contribute to the re-identification
of the position of Japan among
the Asian countries in the globalized
world. |
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The
21st Century COE Program in FY 2003 |
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| In FY 2003, 611 projects were applied
for in 5 categories of research areas
from Japanese national, public and private
universities, and on July 17, the results
of the screening were announced as follows;
Medical sciences: 35 projects
Mathematics, Physics, Earth science: 24
projects
Mechanical, Civil, Construction and
others engineering: 23 projects
Social sciences: 26 projects
Interdisciplinary, Combined Fields,
New Disciplines: 25 projects
From Kyudai, the following 5 projects
were accepted. |
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| Medical
Sciences |
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Program Summary
The conquest
of “the lifestyle-related diseases”
such as stroke, myocardial infarction,
hypertension, diabetes mellitus,
hyperlipidemia and cancer represents
a challenge for maintaining the
hearth and vitality of the nation.
The lifestyle-related diseases
are caused and developed by the
intricate interaction between
polygenetic and environmental
(regionality, eating habits, ethnic
difference, etc) factors. Therefore,
to overcome the lifestyle-related
diseases, their pathogenic characteristic
of Japanese population must be
clarified by analyzing the longitudinally
accumulated epidemiological and
clinical data, and human genomes,
thereby enabling the development
of therapy and prophylaxis.
The Hisayama
study, which is the world-famous
clinicopathological and epidemiological
research, and research and education
on vascular disease peculiar to
Japanese, diabetes mellitus and
cancer has been conducted for
over 40 years in Kyushu University.
In our project,
research is performed in three
areas, Area 1: epidemiology, pathology
and genome, Area 2: analysis of
pathogenesis, and Area 3: frontier
medicine. We will form “COE (the
center of excellence) for Frontier
Research and Education on Lifestyle-Related
Diseases of Japanese” by cooperation
and integration of these three
areas. |
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as completion of Area 1,
we will organize the large-scale
cohort in Kyushu and establish
“The Information Center
for Genomic Epidemiology
in Kyushu University” which
has clinical and genomic
databases constructed in
a common format. We provide
educational courses for
Areas 1, 2 and 3, which
train doctor course students
to be able to conduct research
all in the three areas,
as well as to be an expert
at a specific area. |
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| Mathematics,
Physics, Earth science |
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Program Summary
Historically,
research in mathematics has been
often stimulated by the development
of other sciences. Especially,
recent rapid progress in the computer
has brought new insights to some
branches in mathematics, which
used to be simply out of our reach.
Studies in other disciplines of
science are largely based on analysis
on suitable mathematical models,
and conversely mathematics is
expected to be able to make such
modeling possible with the help
of the computer. Under these circumstances
our department has been maintaining
strong programs in computational,
statistical and discrete mathematics.
By making full use of advantage
of this accumulated experience,
we would like to strengthen our
current programs further to deal
with diverse complexity appearing
in natural, social and information
sciences. We would like to call
such a discipline “Dynamic Mathematics
with High Functionality, DMHF.”
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| Development
of the discipline together
with reform of our graduate
program suited for this
purpose will make our department
an international core institution
in research as well as education.
We believe that such a change
will meet social demand
in the new century. This
COE program will impact
on other disciplines of
science as well as traditional
mathematics such as algebra,
geometry and analysis. |
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| Mechanical,
Civil, Construction and Others
engineering |
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Program Summary
Our target is
the whole habitat system from
a single architecture to the regional
community as an organic entity
of architectures. We propose a
methodology for sustainable development
of our habitat system by reducing
environmental damage together
with maintaining the optimal level
of modern quality of life, which
will help in constructing an ecological
society.
To determine
the optimal solution for a complex
ecosystem we need a unified evaluation
strategy. We use our original
“throughput formula,” in which
we maximize the difference (T:
throughput) between the quality
of life (W: welfare) and environmental
damage (D: damage). |
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can use this fundamental
formula as a tool to evaluate
and manage any sustainable
habitat system developments.
For logical and objective
decision making we must
create a way to translate
different dimensions of
W and D into common indexes.
This fundamental formula
will work as a scale to
measure ecological throughput
of our activities for the
whole life cycle of any
habitat systems. Outcome
of our project will be a
base for a new educational
program on “Sustainable
Architecture,” which will
produce new generation engineers
for sustainable habitat
systems. |
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| Mechanical,
Civil, Construction and Others
engineering |
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Program Summary
We have only
just set out on the road to becoming
a “hydrogen society,” - one which
uses hydrogen as the energy source.
With recent popularization of
the fuel cell car, construction
of the manufacturing and transportation
systems for hydrogen is going
into full swing.
It
is vital for such a society to
have the technology that can treat
hydrogen safely as well as the
basic technology to develop individual
equipment. However, the deepening
and the differentiation of the
scientific technology in recent
years are bringing the loss of
general scholarly viewpoint, which
the mechanical engineering should
have originally, and are increasing
horrible accidents.
This
COE program is the one that will
form the center of excellence,
which will head the world for
the hydrogen society to realize
by challenging the building of
the mechanical systems for hydrogen
utilization, which are indispensable
to form the sustainable society
in the 21st century. |
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We perform
research in three co-laboratories
for “Hydrogen Utilization,” “Hydrogen
Supply” and “Safety Evaluation.”
Simultaneously we place “Board
for Integration Technology,” which
controls these three co-laboratories
to perform the research and practice
on the integration of the differentiating
theories and technologies.
As an educational
feature of the graduate school,
we provide an “Integration Technology
Course,” which requires the doctor
course students to attend the
“Board for Integration Technology”
and therein educates to have the
ability to integrate different
expertise, as well as to deepen
individual expertise on the mechanical
systems for hydrogen utilization. |
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| Interdisciplinary,
Combined Fields, New Disciplines |
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Program Summary
Our everyday
life is increasingly dependent
on artificial environments, and
often human sensibility is neglected
when convenience or economy has
priority. For example, artificial
lighting can violate human biological
rhythms, and excessive use of
artificial images and sounds can
cause nervous disorders or hearing
impairments.
Kyushu
University, with its Faculty of
Design, whose ultimate purpose
is to "humanize modern technology,"
has been building an ideal environment
to tackle such problems in an
interdisciplinary manner. We have
thus decided to rebuild our organization
as a bridgehead for international
cooperation for research and education
in related areas. We try to increase
our understanding of human sensibility
by conducting physiological and
psychological experiments, and
the knowledge obtained is applied
to the actual design of artificial
environments directly.
Our
team is divided into three research
units in order to work efficiently,
i.e. the units of "environmental
physiology," "perceptual
psychology," and "aesthetic
design." The members of the
first two units study human vision,
audition, olfaction, temperature
sensation, somatic sensation etc,
and those belonging to the last
unit-design lighting, images,
sounds, air conditioning, architecture,
etc. We evaluate various artificial
environments from a global viewpoint,
and draw guidelines to design
suitable environments especially
for young children, senior citizens,
and the disabled. |
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| Educating
doctoral students and postdoctoral
researchers is also an important
aspect of our project. We receive
students and young researchers
from all over the world, and train
them in such a way that they gain
experience in at least two of
the three above-mentioned research
units. This will enable us to
organize small but productive
collaboration teams easily. We
try to use both Japanese and English
for communication in order to
make our project really international. |
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