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On the formation of a research and education center
for the "21st Century COE Program"
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Nara
Institute of Science and Technology
Ubiquitous Networked Media Computing
Kunihiro Chihara, Research Center
Leader |
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To form a research and education center for "Ubiquitous
Networked Media Computing" with the Information Processing Specialty as
the basis, the Department of Information Science applied to the "21st Century
COE Program" of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and
Technology, and today, it was elected as one of the nation's 20 best universities
in the fields of "information, electricity and electronics". Our program
has the objective to provide an international center for research and education
related to the integration and the fusion of "internet" as the information
carrier, and "visual/ image media", "acoustic/sound media", "sensory/sound
media" and "force/behavior media" as the information contents.
It is well-known that ever since our research department was established in 1992
to bring a reform in the graduate school education in Japan, the instructors,
students and employees became one and made around-the-clock efforts to form a
new graduate school. For ten years after its establishment, the department has
been contributing to the formation of an international research center in distinct
fields such as internet research based on information network operation, image
media research in immersive virtual fusion space, sound media research based
on hands-free sound recognition, language media research centered on natural
language processing such as the Japanese morpheme analysis system "ChaSen",
behavior media research such as RoboCup and intelligent wheel-chair or system
control technology, etc.
Also, in 2001, which marked the 10th anniversary of the establishment, President
Koji Torii submitted the "Basic Philosophy of NAIST" contemplating
the next generation, and "Ubiquitous Networked Media Computing" is
one of the programs to realize this basic philosophy. By planning the creation
of the next generation media technologies such as highly useful, secure and reliable
software contents that use the real-time characteristics of the next generation
internet, to support the daily lives and intellectual activities of human beings
through networks, and organizational fostering of researchers and technicians
to support them, we must contribute to building a nation that has an international
intellectual presence, while filling the mission of the university, which is
to return the results of research to society as intellectual public properties
and foster human resources. Specifically, it is a top-down type research and
education project with and ambitious and ground-breaking contents, in which 4
major projects will be carried out, i.e., a strategic research development project,
an industry-government-academia collaboration project, an international center
formation project and a young scientist fostering project, to form an international
research and education center for information science in 5 years, driven forward
as the ingenious creativity of each researcher chosen by the intense personality
of the center leader interact mutually under the supporting framework of the
university and the research departments with the strong leadership of the President
As the research center formation leader, I am expressing here the determination
to make the best efforts so that our department deserves to be among the 20 best
universities, while looking forward to see the instructors serving research and
education with several fold the enthusiasm of the past, and the students devoting
themselves to academic work with pride.
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Ubiquitous
Networked Media Computing | 8916-5 Takayama, Ikoma Nara
630-0192, Japan | (0743) 72-5935
Copyright ©2004 Nara Institute of Science and Technology.
All rights reserved.
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