Greeting from the Director General

Greeting from the Director General

Since April 1st, I have been assigned to Director General, National Institute of Informatics.

As Japan's only comprehensive academic research institute in the field of informatics, the National Institute of Informatics (NII) has a mission of promoting basic research in informatics from a long-term perspective together with practical research designed to solve issues that confront society. This research is developed in one of the 4 research divisions: Principles of informatics, Information Systems Architecture Science, Digital Content and Media Sciences or Information and Society. Moreover as an interuniversity institution the NII is the leader/coordinator of different national projects including researchers from others Japanese universities or industry e.g. "Quantum Information Science" or "Big Data Mathematics" or "Cyber Physical Systems".

On the other hand as part of an Inter-University Research Institute, the NII also has the missions of operating a network (SINET4) linking universities and research institutes, creating an academic information infrastructure necessary for research and educational activities in the academic community, providing academic content and service platforms and, through those activities, it is a very important mission to develop human resources and making social and international contributions.

There are few institutions anywhere in the world that conduct research in informatics and simultaneously provide IT services and a network. We believe that operating our own systems and concentrating on the field of informatics, which is developing at a furious speed, are the best ways to stay on top of trends in IT and contribute to create cutting-edge information services with universities. Academic information infrastructure is indispensible to all academic disciplines. The NII aspires to help academia achieve breakthroughs by providing robust information infrastructure for researchers across a range of disciplines.

Under Former Director General Masao Sakauchi, the NII and its Cyber Science　Infrastructure(CSI) have achieved significant development. We believe that ICT is widely recognized as the core enabler for scientific findings and social innovation. In the United States, the IT sector has accounted for 25% of economic growth since 1995, and the basic research that supports the industry plays a considerable role. While it is a traditional picture that new technologies generate services, the creation of non-conventional information and communication technology is being driven by new, idea-driven services. In these circumstances in this century, we will redouble our efforts to create a more flexible academic research system.

Until now the NII has benefited from understanding and support of many　national and international partners, I hope that all of them will　continue to help me to promote the NII as one of the worldwide reference　institution in Informatics.