Osaka University 21st Century COE Program
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On the establishment of the 21st Century COE Program, "Center of Excellence for Advanced Structural and Functional Materials Design"
Center's Leader: Yukichi UmakoshiThe industrial revolution to begin with, development and improvement of new materials and functions have brought social changes and contributed to human society. However, recent material research, in particular metals, is specialized only in individual elemental characteristics and narrow specialty fields, and there is a feeling that the original mission of material research has been forgotten. In the present project, we return to "the origin of material science" to form an integrated research center that contemplates the issues at the application stage and their solutions, in a broad area of research that is strongly aware of "crafting", which results so to speak from the fusion of "hi-tech and lo-tech", spanning from the basic physical characteristics of materials to their applications.

Every now and then, to promote autonomy, I tell students, "Japanese graduate students are really students, those in Europe and the United States are working people". The lives of Japanese students rely on the money supplied by their parents or scholarships only by name, which are loaned money from the Japanese government. Autonomy is impossible, psychologically and in research, without financial autonomy. To adopt post-graduate course students as COE researchers and make them autonomous both financially and psychologically. Also, to train "super elites" who will lead the future of material science, through dispatching to overseas research institutes, participation to projects by collaborative Graduate School with the National Institute for Materials Science, individual guidance from invited outstanding overseas researchers, and so on. Please understand and support the formation of this active international research center.

Center's Leader: Yukichi Umakoshi, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering,
Vice President of Osaka University
mailContact coe21@mateng.osaka-u.ac.jp
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Center of Excellence for Advanced Structural and Functional Materials Design, Osaka University