Message from Director

Society 5.0 is a concept proposed by Japanese government that aims to create a society by utilizing information technology to solve societal issues and create a sustainable future. The Sixth Science, Technology and Innovation Basic Plan aims to materialize this concept. Society 5.0 will make it possible to improve the economy, society, the environment, and even people's lives and health by bringing digital information obtained from objects in physical space into cyberspace, analyzing the data at a speed much faster than human processing through artificial intelligence (AI), and feeding back the intelligence acquired as a result of the analysis to the real world. In order to realize Society 5.0, it is desirable that a “cyber-physical system” with such a continuous improvement loop will permeate all fields and places, so that all activities on the earth will be automatically improved by the power of information technology.

The Graduate School of Information Science (The Information Science Division since 2018) at Nara Institute of Science and Technology, established in October 1991, started with fundamental technologies such as algorithms, software, hardware, and networks, and media processing technologies such as images, speech, and language. It has been conducting research to deepen each of these technologies for over 30 years to expand the frontiers of information science. Today, we continue to produce world-class research results in IoT, Big Data, AI, and related fields that will contribute to the realization of Society 5.0.

In recent years, the realization of Society 5.0 has become an urgent issue in order to solve various problems surrounding humanity, such as the acceleration of global digitalization, energy issues, climate change due to global warming, and the aging society. We believe that our mission in the field of information science is to conduct cutting-edge research that will play a part in this and to develop human resources to continue this research into the future. In order to further expand the possibilities of information science through free and unique thinking, it is also important to have a diverse group of research leaders. The Information Science Division aims to be a place where diverse human resources can gather, create new values, and contribute to a sustainable, prosperous, and peaceful society.