UTokyo-IIS Bulletin
Vol.8 September 2021

Institute of Industrial Science,
The University of Tokyo

Feature

The “alchemy” of
Associate Professor Sakai turns vegetables
and fruit waste into strong building materials
that can be eaten in emergenciesA

s environmental concerns mount around the world, sustainable development haschanged from just wishful thinking to an absolute necessity. Associate Professor
Yuya Sakai of the Institute of Industrial Science, the University of Tokyo(UTokyo-IIS), is on a mission to develop technologies that make eco-friendly
construction a practical and economically viable option. In particular, Sakai has been
harnessing a modern-day “alchemy” that turns food waste and inedible food parts into
construction materials that are stronger than concrete.

In mid-2020, Associate Professor
Yuya Sakai, a specialist in
sustainable construction materials
at UTokyo-IIS’s Department of
Human and Social Systems, heard somejaw-dropping research results: A newmaterial made of Chinese cabbage had abending strength four times greater thanthat of concrete.

guidance had produced such stunning
results.

The unexpected – but welcome andgroundbreaking – findings were reported to
Sakai by one of his undergraduate students,
Kota Machida, who was doing experimentsthat involved making construction materials
from various edible and inedible food items.
Machida also was thrilled that theexperiments conducted under Sakai’s

This new technology could help reduce
Japan’s food waste, which has become agrowing social problem in recent years.
According to the Environment Ministry,
Japan produced about 6 million tons of foodwaste – edible but discarded for one reason
or another – in 2018. The nation also threw
away about 19 million tons of “inedible” food

“Initially, I thought we could make lumps
from these materials, but I never imagined
they would be so strong,” Sakai said. “Thatwas the moment when I became confident
that we can make value-added, strong
construction materials out of food waste.”

Associate Professor Yuya Sakai

items such as skins, outer leaves, damaged
crops or “non-standard” farm products thatare too big, too small or are not of thedesired appearance. Most end up being used
for fertilizer and animal feed, or get
incinerated or buried as rubbish.
Another huge advantage of these raw
materials is that acquiring them will not
break the bank. They often can be procured
at no cost, and, in some cases, a small fee ispaid to anyone who takes them away, Sakai
said.

Temperature key to making strong materials

Under the method Sakai’s teamdeveloped, which is patentpending, vegetables and fruits are
dried, turned into powder and thensubject to thermal compression. The
materials retain some of the food’s aroma
and taste.

Pinpointing the right temperature was thefirst major hurdle. “We first heatedpowdered foods, such as tea leaves, to
200℃, but they ended up burning or goingmushy,” Sakai said. “After realizing that wemust apply the optimal temperature to eachspecific food item, the research wentsmoothly.”

Further information

2

The temperatures applied vary, but averagearound 100℃. This process does not emit a
lot of carbon dioxide (CO2). Pressure applied
to the mix is about 20 MPa, equivalent to thepressure 2,000 meters under the sea.

the fine powder particles during compression
and then serves as an adhesive when cooled. A
material made of Chinese cabbage could
withstand 18 MPa, far more than concrete’s
about 5 MPa.

The acquired bending strength also depends
on the ingredients. Material made ofChinese cabbage yielded the greatest
strength, while one made of pumpkin was
weak. Adding Chinese cabbage to pumpkin
increased the strength, Sakai added.

The research results raised hope that suchmaterials could replace some, if not all,concrete used for construction at a time whenits ingredients such as sand, gravel or crushedstones are in short supply. Cement, an adhesivefor concrete’s ingredients, is made from,among others, limestone that must be heated toas high as 1,500℃ to burn. This process
requires CO2-emitting energy and also releases
this gas from the limestone. In fact, CO2
emissions from cement manufacturing accountfor a staggering 8 percent of global emissions.

Just why this process creates such strong
materials remains under study, but Sakai
hypothesizes that sugar in the food issoftened by the heat, flows into gaps among

Sakai Laboratory
https://r.goope.jp/ysakai
https://www.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/news/3567/

UTokyo-IIS Bulletin 2021 September

Featuresustainability
Making construction materials edibleA

nother astonishing aspect ofthese materials is that they are
edible. According to Sakai,
however, eating building
materials is nothing new in Japan. “Forexample, Kumamoto Castle is known forusing some edible construction materials,”
Sakai said. This castle built centuries ago in
the southern prefecture of Kumamoto
reportedly used taro stalks for tatami matsand included dried gourd shavings for wallmaterials to provide food when it was undersiege.
The team has verified that seasonings suchas sugar, salt and powdered broth boost
the overall strength. The materials can also
be used to make accessories, tablewareand furniture, to name but a few. “They canbe used to make plates,” Sakai said. “You
could eat a meal and the plate, too.”

Enhancing the materials’ durability is thenext task. Sakai’s team is conducting
experiments with edible waterproofing
agents after confirming conventional
agents used for wood work well but are notedible.
Since the new materials were unveiled in
May 2021, Sakai’s team has received
suggestions to try various food items,
including seaweed, crab shells andmushroom. “People send us all kinds offood waste to include in our experiments,”
Sakai said. “We are hoping to make goodmaterials that combine various kinds offood waste.”

Drying : Dried vegetable and fruit waste

Making powder :Pulverized vegetable and fruit waste

Molding : Heat-pressing machine

Addressing concrete problems

Sakai is involved in several
concrete-related research
projects. One project focuses on
recycling concrete in asustainable manner. Crushing old concrete
structures and compressing the powder
can produce new, robust concrete, he said.
Sakai’s research could even have
implications that go beyond our planet.
Sakai is conducting research to determine
whether sand particles, for example thoseon the moon, could be bonded without
using conventional adhesives, such as
cement or resins. “If that sand could beheld together with alcohol and a catalyst to

make construction materials,
structures could be built on themoon,” Sakai said.
An avid reader of any genre,
Sakai often gets researchinspiration from reading books.
Sakai also is a father of three smallchildren, and he gets up at 5 a.m. so he hastime in the evenings after work to play withand care for them.

UTokyo-IIS Bulletin 2021 September

3Feature

Project Professor Sekimoto develops first nationwide pseudodata
he COVID-19 pandemic has
demonstrated how crucial it
is to control people’s
movement if we want tocontain the virus’s spread.
Project Professor Yoshihide Sekimoto of
the UTokyo-IIS, the University of Tokyo(UTokyo-IIS), is pursuing an ambitious
project using samples of recorded data

to create pseudodata on how people
move around the whole of Japan. The
use of the data will circumvent lengthy,
cumbersome processes to clear privacy
issues related to sharing data, including
those from the global positioning
system (GPS) collected by mobile
carriers.

n the latter half of the 2010s
while conducting his
research, Project Professor
Yoshihide Sekimoto, a
specialist in human-centeredurban informatics, repeatedly hit
privacy-related stumbling blocks while
exploring ways to share GPS data for
tracking the movement of people.

metropolitan area right before and after
the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake forthe first time using GPS data. “But suchdata (even after being processed) cannot
be shared with other researchers due tostringent regulations over personal data,
meaning there is no data widely
available on the movement of people asa common asset.”“GPS data from cellphones are extremely
useful in discovering various
phenomena,” said Sekimoto who tracked
the flow of people in the Tokyo

The restrictions prompted Sekimoto toseek an alternative way to assess the
movement of people without using GPS
data – albeit one that would be lessaccurate. But the
emergence of COVID-19
was the driver behind
Sekimoto’s push to
generate pseudodata –data which simulates
real-life behavior – forresearch.

Flow of people when
the Great East Japan
Earthquake occurred

Project Professor Yoshihide Sekimoto

Pseudodata proves its worth
team led by Sekimoto, who
also serves as professor at
UTokyo’s Center for Spatial
Information Science, has so
far generated pseudodata on
the movement of people in Shizuoka
and Toyama prefectures, the former ofwhich faces the Pacific, and the latter,
the Sea of Japan.

and combined them with available open
or low-cost data, including those
extracted from buildings and means oftransportation. Sekimoto then defined
three agent-based models for the data:
commuters who leave their house in themorning and return in the evening;housewives or househusbands who
occasionally visit grocery stores andother destinations nearby; and students
who commute to their primary, middle
or high schools.

Shizuoka Prefecture is the 10th mostpopulous of Japan’s 47 prefectures witha population of ３.6 million as of 2019,
while Toyama Prefecture ranks 37th with “The pseudodata based on this method
a population slightly over 1 million.
so far had a correlation coefficient (astatistic used to show how the scores
But how did the Sekimoto manage tofrom one measure relate to scores on amodel how people move around without second measure for the same group of
using GPS data?
individuals) score of 0.75 compared withthe actual GPS data,” Sekimoto said,
His team used national census data to
explaining that a coefficient score of 1.0
gain knowledge about the ages andis a perfect match between the two sets
genders of people living in communities of data. “In certain areas, we succeeded
4

UTokyo-IIS Bulletin 2021 September

in recreating traffic volumes by time slotwith a high accuracy.”
The team plans to complete pseudodata
covering all of Japan by the end of thisyear as it aims to hone to attain acorrelation coefficient score of 0.9. To
improve the data’s accuracy, the teamwill identify destinations of each of the
distinct models, such as commuters’
workplaces, with more accuracy, andthen add more models for otherdemographics including senior citizens.
“We are preparing to allow researchers
to share our urban digital twin (a virtual
representation of an urban area) madebased on people-flow pseudodata
during the pandemic and beyond,”
Sekimoto said.

Featureof how people move around in Japan for the post-COVID-19 world
Wide range of applications possible
ekimoto first got involved in
the study of the movementof people when the People
Flow Project was launchedat the Center for Spatial
Information Science in 2008 when no
GPS data was available.
“I wanted to roughly track the
movements of millions of people,” hesaid. He initially used the results ofsurveys questioning how people moved
around before GPS data became
available in the 2010s.

One of his research topics using GPS
data was to analyze how people
evacuated in the wake of major
earthquakes such as those in East Japan
in 2011 and Kumamoto in 2016. He also
analyzed how people’s contacts
affected the spread of COVID-19 – only
to find once again that this researchdata could not be shared with otherresearchers.
Pseudodata, on the other hand, will
facilitate data sharing among
researchers, a step that can makesignificant contribution to scientificadvancements – be it infection control
or disaster management. The data is
expected to be available for researchers
free of charge by the end of theacademic year in March 2022.
Its development also has implications
overseas. Previously Sekimoto had tosign a memorandum of understanding
with each Asian cellphone carrier to
conduct research, which limited thesetting for research to the country
where it was located. “If we use
pseudodata, we can share them among
researchers across the world,” he said.

Visualization of peopleʼs movements across all of Toyama Prefecture (at noon, on a weekday)

3-D digital twin to transform urban informatics
ekimoto, in his work as a
researcher, is also focusing
on the high-speed
generation of athree-dimensional,
hot-standby digital twin that allows
users to look at a digital map while also
obtaining detailed, relevant data with aclick, through the use of software
Sekimoto is developing.
Sekimoto wears many hats in addition
to his academic positions. He is thehead of the Association for Promotionof Infrastructure Geospatial Information
Distribution, a nonprofit organization

Further information

dedicated to collecting and distributing
data related to social infrastructure. Oneof the latest pieces of information theassociation unveiled was related to a
massive mud slide that struck the Atami
hot spring resort in Shizuoka Prefecture– within 24 hours of when disasterstruck on July 3, 2021.

maintenance. Its technologies are basedon research Maeda conducted under theguidance of Sekimoto.

He also serves as a director of UrbanX
Technologies, Inc., a start-up launchedin 2020 by one of his former graduate
students, Hiroya Maeda. The company
provides data collected by mobile
phones and dashcams and analyzed
with artificial intelligence (AI) for road

“Maybe my demeanor lacks a kind ofgravitas usually associated with auniversity professor,” Sekimoto laughed.
“But I try not to put up unnecessary
barriers between me and my students sothat they can engage in their work in afree atmosphere.”

Sekimoto Laboratory
http://sekilab.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp
https://www.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/news/3393/

Maeda has described Sekimoto as adown-to-earth teacher who can steer his
students toward interesting research
topics like his.

UTokyo-IIS Bulletin 2021 September

5

News

The ring presented along with the honorary degree

Norwegian ambassador Inga M. W. Nyhamar presenting the honorary degree to Prof. Okabe

Honorary doctorate bestowed upon
Prof. Toru H. Okabe by the Norwegian Universityof Science and Technology (NTNU)On Friday, March 26, 2021,
NTNU has a long history dating back to
Professor Toru H. Okabe
1935, with 97 recipients to date. Professor
was awarded an honorary
Okabe is the third Japanese recipient ofdoctorate, i.e. , Doctor Honoris Causa at this honorary degree, which was also given
the Norwegian University of Science and to Professor Hiroyuki Yoshikawa, aTechnology (NTNU), for hisformer president of the University ofcontribution to “URBAN MINING”
Tokyo, in 2001.
for developing new and more
The honorary doctoral award ceremony,sustainable methods for the production which had been postponed because of theand resource recovery of metals used in COVID-19 pandemic, was held online bymodern electronic devices.
the NTNU in Trondheim, Norway, andThis award symbolizes the world
the Norwegian Embassy in Japan. In thisleadership of Japan in this research
first of its kind online ceremony, Anne
field.
Borg, Rector of NTNU, conferred an
The conferral of honorary degrees athonorary doctorate via Inga M. W.

Prof. Okabe receiving an honorary degreefrom the ambassador at the Norwegianembassy in Japan

Further information

6

Prof. Geir Martin Haarberg, NTNU, Norway,
introducing Prof. Okabe's researchcontributions with a global impact

The video of the award ceremony can be seen on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5Ig9nDX-W0

UTokyo-IIS Bulletin 2021 September

Nyhamar, the Norwegian Ambassador,
to Professor Okabe in Japan. The
ceremony was well organized by theuniversity and embassy officials.

Rector Anne Borg of NTNU,
Norway conducting
the honorary doctoral award ceremony

The list of achievements of the recipient can be found on the following link:
https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toru_H._Okabe

News

Wish upon a StarO

n July 21, 2021, IIS
International Mixer #3 washeld with the themeof Tanabata , or Star
Festival, and some 50 students andresearchers from various countries
enjoyed an evening of Japanesecultural experience.

Here are someof the wishes
by the participants:
Health, prosperity, happinessAccording to tradition, theparticipants wrote their wishes oncolorful strips of paper calledtanzaku and hung them on bamboo
branches. They also enjoyedplaying with hand-held fireworks
which are commonly used forsummer evening entertainment inJapan.

Pizza
I wish for a happy year
in the lab
No more corona
I wish we may travel
freely very soon

Asmaa from Morocco said, “I havebeen feeling isolated due to
COVID -19 since I came to Japanlast November. This event is thefirst time that I could meet othercolleagues. It is great.” Sakil fromTurkey also said, “This is very
interesting. It’s the first time for me
to try fireworks. It’s very nice tomeet people from different labs.”

Smooth employment

Let's hope that theirwishes will come true!

The 7th DLX Forum “Beyond STEAM:
Design-Led STEAM Education”
On the 14th July 2021, the IIS platform,
Design-Led X (DLX) held The 7th DLX Forum“Beyond STEAM : Design-Led STEAM Education”.
This online event was held as part of Design Symposium 2021.

T

he theme of the forum was“Beyond STEAM” and how
design could take a leadingrole in STEAM education was
discussed. In the first section of theforum, President of UTokyo Prof. Fujii,
gave a special lecture. Then,
Mr. Nakamura and Ms. Asahi from Tata

Consultancy Services Japan (TCSJ)
gave talks representing corporate
members of DLX. In the second part,Prof. Pennington and members of the
DLX Design Lab presented their recent
projects. Finally, Prof.Murakami from the
UTokyo School of Engineering gave apresentation, and he then joined a panel

discussion led by Prof. Yamanaka
with Prof. Toya from DLX, and
Ms. Asahi from TCSJ.
The forum was a success andattracted about 300 attendees.

UTokyo-IIS Bulletin 2021 September

7Research Highlights

Learning to Help
the Adaptive Immune System
Researchers at The University of Tokyo use the mathematics of adaptive learning and artificial intelligence to describe
how T helper cells adjust the response of the vertebrate immune system, which may lead to new vaccines and treatments
for infections.

U

Tokyo-IIS demonstrated how theadaptive immune system uses amethod similar to reinforcement
learning to control the immune
reaction to repeat infections. This work maylead to significant improvements in vaccine
development and interventions to boost theimmune system.
In the human body, the adaptive immune
system fights germs by remembering previous
infections so it can respond quickly if the same
pathogens return. This complex processdepends on the cooperation of many cell types.
Among these are T helpers, which assist bycoordinating the response of other parts of theimmune system—called effector cells—such
as T killer and B cells. When an invading
pathogen is detected, antigen presenting cells
bring an identifying piece of the germ to a T
cell. Certain T cells become activated andmultiply many times in a process known as
clonal selection. These clones then marshal aparticular set of effector cells to battle theReference

8

germs. Although the immune system has been
extensively studied for decades, the“algorithm” used by T cells to optimize theresponse to threats is largely unknown.
Now, scientists at The University of Tokyo haveused an artificial intelligence framework toshow that the number of T helpers act like the“hidden layer” between inputs and outputs inan artificial neural network commonly used in
adaptive learning. In this case, the antigens
presented are the inputs, and the responding
effector immune cells are the output.
“Just as a neural network can be trained inmachine learning, we believe the immune
network can reflect associations between
antigen patterns and the effective responses topathogens,” first author Takuya Kato says.
The main difference between the adaptive
immune system compared with computermachine learning is that only the number of T
helper cells of each type can be varied, as

Takuya Kato, Tetsuya J. Kobayashi
Understanding Adaptive Immune System as Reinforcement Learning
Physical Review Research(2021) , DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevResearch.3.013222

UTokyo-IIS Bulletin 2021 September

opposed to the connection weights between
nodes in each layer. The team used computer
simulations to predict the distribution of T
cell abundances after undergoing adaptive
learning. These values were found to agreewith experimental data based on the genetic
sequencing of actual T helper cells.
“Our theoretical framework may completelychange our understanding of adaptive
immunity as a real learning system,” says
co-author Tetsuya Kobayashi. “This research
can shed light on other complex adaptive
systems, as well as ways to optimize vaccines
to evoke a stronger immune response.”

Associate Professor
Tetsuya J. Kobayashi

Research Highlights

Project Professor
Oki Kazuo

Listening to the©2021 WMOof the Wild:

Tracking Deer Movements Using Sound
Researchers from UTokyo-IIS have designed a new type of systemusing listening devices to detect and track deer positions in the wild.

In the marshland of Japan’s Oze
National Park, keeping track of thedeer population has been a difficult
and time-consuming task for the park
rangers. Now their lives could get much easier,thanks to a novel technique for tracking deer
movements using unmanned listening devices
developed by researchers at the UTokyo-IIS, apart of The University of Tokyo.
Monitoring deer numbers is important in Oze
and other national parks in Japan because deer
are not native to the ecosystem and can havedamaging effects on it. Current methods ofmonitoring deer populations range fromtraditional techniques such as counting
droppings to photographing deer at night using
automated cameras or from above during theday using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
Each of these methods has its drawbacks andlimitations—for example, the thick forest cover

Referencein some parts of the national park makes it
difficult to see the deer from above using
UAVs.

determine its location with precision using a
triangulation technique.

“The problem with using recording devices toestimate the size of deer populations in thepast was that it was difficult to avoid counting
the same deer multiple times—by setting up agrid of listening stations, we are able totriangulate the position of each deer with
precision and track its movements,” says
Tadanobu Okumura, one of the researchers
who developed the technology.

“When we tested our prototype in anexperimental setting in the playground of The
University of Tokyo, we were able to pinpoint
the location of a sound within five meters. In asecond trial under more realistic conditions in
the marshland at Oze National Park, it waspossible to locate a sound to within about
fifteen meters,” explains Kazuo Oki, who also
worked on the project. During a two-hour trial
in Oze, the system picked up 72 distinct deercalls.

The researchers built a prototype listening
station which is powered by solar panels andautomatically synchronizes its internal clockwith a GPS satellite. As the recordings fromeach of the stations are synchronized, the lagin the time it takes the sound of a deer toreach the recording station can be used toThis prototype is a first step toward building asystem that can be installed in the wild andmonitored remotely. In the muddy wetlands ofOze, this could make the task of counting
deer a lot easier.

Salem Ibrahim Salem, Kazuhiko Fujisao, Masayasu Maki, Tadanobu Okumura and Kazuo Oki
Detecting and tracking the positions of wild ungulates using sound recordings
Sensors (2021), DOI: 10.3390/s21030866
UTokyo-IIS Bulletin 2021 September

9Research Highlights
Meeting the meat needs of the futureA

research team led by Shoji Takeuchi have succeeded in culturing
meat in the laboratory in the form of millimeter-scale slabs ofcontractile bovine muscle. This innovative tissue culture process, arrayedin stackable hydrogel modules, uses electrical pulses to align myotubules
thus mimicking the texture, grain and bulk of real steak meat. Further
advances may help meet the increasing worldwide demand for dietary
meat while addressing economic, environmental and ethical concerns thatbeset animal slaughter today.
Science of Food（2020）, DOI: 10.1038/s41538-021-00090-7
Further information

https://www.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/news/3495/

Replacing what was lost:
A novel cell therapy for type I diabetes mellitusA

research team led by Shoji Takeuchi developed a novel device forthe safe and effective transplantation of human pancreaticbeta-cells in type I diabetes mellitus (T1D). By constructing amillimeter-thick graft encapsulating beta-cells and transplanting it indiabetic mice, they were able to show that the device was removable forup to 1 year and without a significant foreign body response. This study
demonstrates a novel option for cell therapy for T1D.
iScience (2021), DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2021.102309
Further information

https://www.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/news/3520/

Closer hardware systems bring the futureof artificial intelligence into viewA

research team led by Masaharu Kobayashi integrated amobility-enhanced field-effect transistor and ferroelectric capacitor
to reduce the energy required by machine learning computation. Bothelements contained tin-doped indium gallium zinc oxide, which can be
included in the ‘back end of line’ layers of integrated circuits. The
proximity that this made possible is expected to contribute tohigh-density, energy-efficient computing for future AI applications.
presented at VLSI Technology Symposium (2021)
Further information

https://www.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/news/3569/

Discovery of a new law of phase separationA

research team led by Hajime Tanaka show that the dynamics of
spontaneous phase separations forming network structures can becontrolled by the slow dynamics in the networks formed. This work maylead to cheaper and more powerful rechargeable batteries.

Nature Communications (2021)
DOI : 10.1038/s41467-020-20734-8
Further information

10

UTokyo-IIS Bulletin 2021 September

https://www.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/news/3484/

Professor Toru H. Okabe, Director General

Message from the Director General / Scope
The Covid-19 pandemic has transformed our lives, making us realize thelimits of science and technology against formidable viruses. At the sametime, through remote work and online lectures, we have become more awareof the importance and the future potential of digital transformation (DX).
Many issues cannot be solved by technology alone. However, engineering is
expected to play an increasingly important role in meeting the challenges ofmodern society, which has become ever more complicated and diversified.

systematically engages in interdisciplinary or international activities byusing organizations such as the cross-disciplinary research centers.
In 2017, the Chiba Experiment Station was relocated from its original site in
Nishi-Chiba to the Kashiwa Campus, and since 2020, the facility is
operating as a Large-scale Experiment and Advanced-analysis Platform(LEAP). In addition, a completely new facility called the “Design-Led X
Platform,” the first of its kind, has also begun operations in 2017.

The Institute of Industrial Science (IIS) at the University of Tokyo is thelargest university-affiliated research institute in Japan. With a commitment
to pursuing academic truth, the UTokyo-IIS carries out a wide range ofeducational and research activities, such as cross-disciplinary research thattranscends academic boundaries — which is a traditional feature of the
UTokyo-IIS — as well as practical industry–academic collaboration,international collaboration, and hands-on research aimed at social
implementation.
In 2019, we celebrated our 70th anniversary. During the past 70
years, there have been significant research accomplishments andwe have succeeded in producing many outstanding members ofsociety.

Since the foundation of the UTokyo-IIS, we have been acutely aware that thesignificance of academic research in engineering lies in its real-world
implementation. Not only have we created new academic fields throughenhanced specialization and collaboration across disciplines, but we havealso developed and deployed technologies that can contribute to solving
problems in the real world. In addition, we have made it our mission todevelop individuals who will shoulder the responsibility of developing
and disseminating technology in the industrial world.
The spirit and the sense of mission of the UTokyo-IIS since its
establishment still live on, and we tackle various
engineering-related issues in a practical manner as a pioneeringorganization advocating industry–academic collaboration.

The UTokyo-IIS is a comprehensive engineering research
institute that covers almost all fields of engineering,consisting of five research divisions. It has
approximately 120 laboratories overseen by professors,
associate professors, and lecturers. More than 1,200
personnel, comprising approximately 250 faculty
members, 150 support members, and 800 graduate
students and postdocs participate in educationaland research activities that are responsible for
producing excellent research outcomes andfostering outstanding talent.
Furthermore, there are 3 affiliatedresearch centers that span multiple
research departments, 7 internal
centers, 2 collaborative research
centers, and an international
collaborative research center
that pursues international joint
research. In addition topromoting original
research in specialized
fields, each laboratory

Such achievements and such a proactive stance are widely
recognized, along with the name SEIKEN (short name for
IIS in Japanese).
We seek to create a new “SEIKEN style” as we continue
to pursue academic truth as a university research
institute, contribute to the creation of new value
through innovation, and aim for a multidisciplinary
approach integrating humanities and sciences for
implementation in the real world.

Five Research Departments and Research Centers

Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo (UTokyo-IIS)
https://www.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/
Komaba Research Campus（Komaba Ⅱ Campus）
4-6-1 Komaba Meguro-ku, TOKYO 153-8505, JAPANE-mail：koho.iis@gs.mail.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Kashiwa Campus
5-1-5 KASHIWANOHA KASHIWA-SHI, CHIBA 277-8574, JAPAN (Kashiwa Campus)
6-2-3 KASHIWANOHA KASHIWA-SHI, CHIBA 277-0882, JAPAN (Kashiwa Ⅱ Campus)
E-mail : kashiwa.iis@gs.mail.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Although the UTokyo-IIS is the largest
university research institute in Japan, it
maintains a strong sense of unity as anorganization. Using its agility andcomprehensive capabilities, the
UTokyo-IIS will continue to fulfill
its role as one of the world’s top
research institutes in the field ofengineering. We believe that wewill continue to make great
contributions to society
through research andeducation.

Publications
https://issuu.com/utokyo-iis

UTokyo-IIS Bulletin 2021 September

11

UTokyo-IIS Bulletin
Institute of Industrial Science,
The University of Tokyo
pro@iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp
https://www.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/©2021 Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo