Osaka University 21st Century COE Program
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Purpose of the Program
In order for material research to contribute to society, research frameworks specialized in individual elemental properties and narrow specialty areas must be broken down to build a new research platform where researchers can collaborate, encompassing broad areas from fundamental physical properties of materials, their fabrication and application, to their utilization, disposal and recycling, and where systematic research may be developed, which also covers problems that will be encountered at the stage of practical application and their solutions. To this end, in the present platform, materials with a broad range of practical use will be developed, from advanced structural materials such as aerospace materials to biomaterials, taking advantage of the results from many areas, from the basics of physical properties to materials fabrication process, joining and production engineering, leading robot and sensor engineering, etc. In addition, we are aiming to form an integrated platform that will allow evaluation of functional diagnosis and reliability of the materials to be carried out and feed back the evaluation constantly to materials design, in parallel.

For this purpose, a platform will be formed by 7 research and education organizations from Osaka University: the Department of Material Science, which has a track record in atomic level controlled materials and device development, the Department of Material Application Engineering, which carries out environment-conscious materials development, the Department of Manufacturing Science, which is the only department in Japan related to practical application production processes, the Department of Adaptive Machine Systems, characterized by the fabrication and control of intelligent artificial objects, the Joining and Welding Research Institute, which is the only international research organization related to leading joining and design, the Center for Ultra-High Voltage Electron Microscope, which has the highest level of nano-level structure evaluation technology in the world, and the Institute of Scientific and Industrial Research, a pioneer in industrial applications.
While tightening mutual collaborations and organically associating with each other, they will promote the formation of a leading material research center ahead of the world. Taking as a reference the results from evaluations by a newly created third-party evaluation organization including citizens, the center leaders will carry out theme changes and reorganization of members to plan for the fluidity of the researchers. In addition, as an important educational center to achieve the above-mentioned goal, education of human resources, which may be called super-elites, who are self-reliant and have excellent international perception, and advanced structural and functional materials designing capabilities.

By forming the Center, not only fulfillment of the social mission of training super-elite candidate students in post-doctoral courses, who will lead the world materials research, but also the construction of a new learning system can be expected. The formation of the Center is only possible at Osaka University, which has powerful organizations that cover not only materials science but also from joining and production engineering to leading robot and sensor engineering, and where organic associations among them are possible. In addition, establishment of a "Research Center for Advanced Structural and Functional Materials Design" associated with the School of Engineering Osaka University is planned at completion of the program.

 
mailContact coe21@mateng.osaka-u.ac.jp
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Center of Excellence for Advanced Structural and Functional Materials Design, Osaka University