Greeting from the Project Director
Alliance Project Director
Director of IMRAM, Tohoku University Professor,Dr Masami Terauchi
As the 3rd phase of the network of five research institutes across Japan (1st phase: 2010-2015, 2nd phase: 2016-2021), we are very pleased to announce the start of our new activities as " Crossover Alliance to Create the Future with People, Intelligence and Materials " (headquartered at the IMRAM, Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials, Tohoku University) in April 2022. The Crossover Alliance will promote the project under the control of the CORE² Collaboration Center newly established within the IMRAM at Tohoku University as a part of organizational reforms aimed at enhancing research capabilities. The CORE² Collaboration Center will play a central role to conduct research activities with originality unique to an inter-university organization.
The five research institutes have researchers more than four hundred in various fields and are expected to fuse them together. As a first step, in FY2022, a group on information & mathematics, named as AI group, is newly organized in addition to the previously existing three groups on electronics, environmental energy, and life science. This new group will promote collaborations and accelerate innovation in the field of materials and devices. In addition, this project will create an environment in which university researchers can work fluidly across organizational boundaries by actively utilizing cross-appointments and other means. By mutually and effectively utilizing each other's human resources and environmental facilities, researchers will strengthen the research capabilities of individual universities and contribute to society through the practical application of the results in the Alliance Project.
In addition, as a new attempt of this project, we plan lecture meetings on philosophy, contemporary Japanese studies, psychology, etc., to promote exchange knowledges between researchers in the humanities & social sciences and materials & device sciences. It will work to incorporate social scientific perspectives into materials and device development researches.
This is an unprecedented large-scale joint research project of five national university’s research institutes in their respective fields of expertise to form a complementary and cooperative system. The Alliance Project is expected to make a significant contribution to the realization of a safe, secure, and high quality of life.
The Alliance Project aims not only to strengthen the research capabilities of the joined five research institutes, but also to invigorate the entire research community in Japan and overseas, and to support future-oriented and challenging research. We also respect the diversity of research and support research that is full of potential. We hope that many researchers in Japan and abroad will take advantage of this Alliance Progroject and use it to crossover their research activities.