October 2nd, 2023
Congratulatory Address for the Fall 2023
Graduate School Entrance Ceremony
Yasunori Mitani, President
Kyushu Institute of Technology (Kyutech)
Congratulations on your admission and welcome to Kyutech. On behalfof our faculty and staff, I would like to express my respect for your effort
to enter our graduate school, and it is our great pleasure to welcome you
all today.
At the beginning of this academic year, the restrictions due to the covid19 have finally been lifted in Japan, and today we are welcoming all of you
in the same mode of our entrance ceremony as we used to hold before thepandemic, which is a great pleasure not only for all of our faculty and staff
but also everyone supporting our university.
Today we have 71 new students here, and 97% or 69 students areinternational students from 22 different countries and regions. I would liketo give my gratitude to you from many different countries and regions forchoosing Kyutech in this such unstable situation of the world, and forcoming a long way to join us.
As we are seeing these days, the world is currently exposed to many social
divisions, but I believe in the world where science and technology canalways bring about innovations through meetings and exchanges between
people with various intelligences and personalities in a free and open
environment. I am certain that this is the right way for our progress. I
expect and hope that you will meet new mentors, make many friends,
interact with diverse researchers, expand your network, and greatly
deepen your knowledge during your life at Kyutech.

In recent years, our social life and economic activities have been greatly
affected in various way by current social divisions and intolerant
nationalism with extreme ideology. When disruptions in supply chainsaffect the distribution of energy and food, causing various problems thatare directly connected to our lives, it reminds us clearly that our lives are
made up of complex interconnections in the world which must be stable.
In addition, political ambitions often create even more unnecessary
confusion in the competitive progress cutting-edge technological products,
such as semiconductors and electric vehicles. Each of us is now required tohave the ability to survive in this unpredictable and unstable world wherea series of dramatic changes happen in such a short period of time. Now,
all of you here today have made a first step of your new life in thisuncertain and unstable era.
What you can do in our graduate school is to acquire the skills andintelligence necessary to contribute to building a prosperous and peacefulworld. You need to have curiosity, sense of exploration, and persistence. If
you have strong curiosity and sense of exploration, you will be able to learn
positively to acquire new skills and intelligence in order to continue togrow with your persistence. In addition, when you acquire the ability fromyour many experiences to respond to various changes, you will be able toadvance the abilities you have acquired with your new experience. You willbe blessed with various opportunities to learn and experience many thingsin today's world with the rapid progress of science and technology.
The evolution of generative AI is becoming a hot topic around the world.
I am certain that most of us have ever actually used and been amazed byits capability and performance. Meantime, I assume that people are also
aware of the limitations of AI. Although AI is not perfect, you can learn
how to bring AI technology to work together with other technologies inpromoting your research work in our graduate school. It is the people,
human being, who can approach to confront the reality with passion,strong attention, curiosity, and sense of exploration base on real experience
whereas AI can derive some samples of answers to a question from a hugehistorical database in a short time. Thus, what is important for you is tohave as much real experience as possible with a strong sense of criticalthinking towards everything. I do hope that you can develop your own
curiosity and inquisitiveness persistently to develop your personality andabilities to prevail over AI in this sense.
Last but not least, to conclude my address, I wish you good health and thebest of luck on making successful start of your new life at Kyutech where
you can grow your intellectual curiosity, take advantage of various learning
opportunities and environments in this new place, and have a valuable
graduate school life so that your choice of entering our university will bring
the best result for you. Congratulations and welcome to Kyutech.