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KOBE UNIVERSITY

Inspiring a new generationof innovators
With the opening of its new Graduate
School of Science, Technology andInnovation in early 2016, Kobe
University will bring together ideas
from across the sciences and commerce
to forge new areas of innovation.

Kobe city, located just 30 kilometres
west of Osaka, is a major historicalcentre of commerce and one of thefirst Japanese port cities to open up to therest of the world after the end of the country’s policy of isolation in the mid-1800s.
This long commercial and ideologicalinteraction with the West has given Kobe
a reputation of being an internationaland cosmopolitan city — an important
player in the modernization of Japan anda place where great things happen. And it
was in this melting pot in 1902 that Kobe
University has its origins.
“Kobe University started as a higher
commercial school,” says President Hiroshi
Takeda. “This commercial tradition formed
the groundwork for some of Japan’s top
achievements in education and research,
particularly in business administration andeconomics, and we have produced many
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of the business leaders who helped lay thefoundations of modern Japan.”At the same time, Kobe University has
built an international reputation for education and research in the natural sciences,
life sciences and medicine, from bioproduction to advanced membrane technology, infectious disease research, synthetic
biology and planetology. One of Japan’s
greatest contributions to the life sciences ―the discovery and development of induced
pluripotent stem (iPS) cells ― was made by
Kobe University’s Shinya Yamanaka, whoreceived the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology
or Medicine for the achievement.
“While continuing to work towards
more in-depth research in each field, we
also emphasize combinations of and collaborations between different academicareas by engaging in various advanced
and interdisciplinary research projects,”
says Takeda. “In 2007, we created aunique interdisciplinary organization, theOrganization of Advanced Science andTechnology, to streamline graduate school
education and promote advanced research and collaboration across five of ourscience graduate schools. The Graduate

President Hiroshi Takeda

School of Science, Technology andInnovation will further support advanced
interdisciplinary research in the naturalsciences as well as equip our students
with the entrepreneurial skills needed tocommercialize academic research results.”
Bridging the gap
The new Graduate School of Science,
Technology and Innovation is unique inJapan in embedding education and capacity-building in innovation, commercialization, entrepreneurship and enterprise
into a graduate science programme. With
this initiative, Kobe University is aiming tonurture a new generation of science professionals with a commercial mindset andthe ability to take an idea from research tothe securing of intellectual property rights,
development of production technology
and eventually market development.
“The so-called valley of death, where
research and development does not connect to commercial success, has become
an issue for industry worldwide,” says
Takeda. “I hope that the people we train
in this new graduate school will have theability to solve these industry problems
and lead innovation. I believe that thisinitiative could revitalize industry in Japan,
and maybe even internationally.”
In yet another first for a Japanese
university, the establishment of the newgraduate school is accompanied by thecreation of the university’s own venturecompany, which will incubate and commercialize the research results coming outof Kobe University.
“This new Graduate School of Science,
Technology and Innovation is a trial in
Japan,” says Akihiko Kondo, who will assume deanship of the new graduate schoolin April 2016. “With this graduate school,
we will draw on Kobe University’s strengths
in bioproduction, membrane technology,
communication technology and medical
science, and combine them with eachother, with partners from industry, andwith education and training in entrepreneurship, finance and innovation to create
new commercial fields of technology.”
Kobe University has been involved indeveloping several biological production
processes that are now used in industry,
bringing together fields such as synthetic
biology, metabolic engineering and biopharmaceuticals. It is Japan’s centre forsynthetic biology research — the engineering of ‘designer’ biomolecules andorganisms — and has developed strong
synergetic relationships with local biomedical companies in the medical applicationof synthetic biology technologies. The university also hosts the Integrated Biorefinery
Center, a commercial pharmaceutical production facility and Japan’s sole collaborative facility for bioproduction.
Membrane technology has long been an
area of strength for Kobe University. The
Center for Membrane and Film Technology
is the only research centre of its kind inJapan and serves as a central research hub

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for advanced membrane research. “Our researchers are leaders in the recovery andseparation of carbon dioxide, desalination,
gas separation, membrane antifoulingtechnology and the emerging area of forward osmosis for separating and concentrating target molecules,” says Kondo.
In medical science, the Graduate Schoolof Science, Technology and Innovation will
pursue many promising areas of research,building on Kobe University’s pedigreein iPS technology. “In addition to further
developing iPS technology itself, we are
involved in cancer therapy and drug
discovery, as well as advanced vaccine
development and the computationallyassisted search for new drug candidates,”says Kondo. “Computational science iscritical to many areas of advanced research, from calculating new materials
for photosynthesis and catalysis, to thedesign of enzymes and cells. Multiscale
supercomputer simulations will open
many new interdisciplinary opportunities
for innovation.”

A national innovation hub
The holistic integration of research, development and commerce at Kobe University
does not end at the campus gates. The university’s collaboration and joint research
activity extends well into Kobe city andbeyond — an area awash with national research institutes and world-class researchfacilities, including the Port Island superscience cluster, the SPring-8 high-energy
particle accelerator and SACLA X-ray freeelectron laser, and the K computer — oneof the fastest supercomputers in the world.
“Kobe University successfully blends
tradition with innovation, and humanities
with the social and natural sciences,” says
Takeda. “We provide special education
programmes, including some offered entirely in English, with the aim of producing
globally minded students. And we pursue
innovation through interdisciplinary
research. In this way, we will continue to
strive to meet the challenge of creating
new values in order to solve current issues
and support the society of the future.”Contact
Kobe University
International Affairs Planning Division
Tel: +81 (0) 78-803-5046
E-mail: intl-relations@office.kobe-u.ac.jp
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