COI
Community Implementation
COI is short for Center of Innovation, a program of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). Under this program, national universities are required to contribute to industry as core institutions for ground-breaking innovation.
Health Sciences Innovation and Promotion Center
KIT established a Health Sciences Innovation and Promotion Center in 2013. To tackle the various problems caused by the aging of the Japanese population and decline in the birth rate in recent years, this center has been engaged in the following:
(1) Research and development into the establishment of living environments, such as residential spaces, facilities and appliances which enable the elderly and dementia sufferers to live independently in safety; and
(2) Research and development into equipment that will allow them to maintain their links with family and community while remaining in their own homes, and support them with social participation and communication.
Green Innovation Center
In November 2015, KIT launched a Green Innovation Center, with the aim of establishing a center for research in the area of green innovation, in close cooperation with the university’s programs for the strengthening of green-innovation functions. It will achieve this aim by further developing the outcomes of the “High-Efficiency Energy Use” initiatives it has pursued to date, participating in the “Kyoto Next-Generation Energy System Creation Strategy” currently being pursued in the Kyoto region, and drawing researchers together.
advanced research into new materials development
Further, as a program for the strengthening of the university’s functions in the area of high-molecular-weight fiber materials, KIT, centered on its high-molecular-weight research groups and in conjunction with five overseas universities based in the UK, France, Hungary, Canada, and Singapore, is attracting and inviting units of researchers that are involved in advanced research into new materials development. The specific research themes are described below. KIT will continue to expand its network of counterpart universities in this area.
COI Project Initiatives
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Green Innovation Center
At the Green Innovation Center, research is underway to realize sophisticated power control for greater efficiency of electric power consumption. To realize this kind of power control, electric power needs to be switched on and off at high speeds. Towards this end, the Center is working on: (1) the development of gallium nitride (GaN) electric power control transistors that can switch large-scale electric power on and off rapidly; (2) the development of drive circuits suitable for rapid on-off switching of GaN and silicon carbide (SiC) power control transistors; and (3) the development of new electric power systems that operate in unison with information and communication and power control transistors. -
Fibers and High-molecular-weight
1. Development of organic photoelectron devices
(University of Cambridge, Cavendish Laboratory, UK)*
2. Polymer and nanobubble basic research
(Université Paris Diderot, France)
3. Creation of new materials through the fusion of nanomaterials science and non-linear science
(Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary)
4. Application of polymers and nanobubbles
(University of Manitoba, Canada)
5. Development of hybrid materials between metal nanoparticles and polymers
(National University of Singapore, Singapore)
* (The institutions in brackets are the home universities KIT is inviting.)
