Opening Ceremony of CAIST

Opening ceremony

The Research Center for Advanced Information Science and Technology (CAIST) had been established within the University of Aizu as of the beginning of FY 2009, and its opening ceremony was held on April 3, with the attendance of guests from Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) and University personnel relevant to the CAIST.
Following a brief address given by Shigeaki Tsunoyama, the President of the University of Aizu, concurrently serving as Director of the CAIST, Jiro Iwase, the Regent of the University of Aizu, concurrently serving as Vice-Director of the CAIST, outlined the center.
After the opening ceremony, a kick-off meeting for the Aizu Research Cluster for Space Science (ARC-Space)※, one of the specific fields of the center, was also held, launching operations of the center, for which achievements are highly expected.
A research team called "cluster" was respectively established for three emphasized fields of research, Space Information Science and Technology, Local Environment, and Medical Engineering. Research will be promoted to meet social needs, based on research on computer science and engineering conducted at the University of Aizu, so that CAIST can contribute to development of local industries and creation of new businesses, based on its achievements.
Upon establishment of CAIST, faculty members were placed beyond the boundary of laboratories and new faculty members exclusively affiliated with CAIST were employed. CAIST will also allow students of the University and researchers within and outside the University to participate in activities involved with the center, placing an emphasis on nurturing of human resources who will play a leading role in multi-disciplinary fields combined with information sciences through conducting research involving diverse social needs.

* ARC-Space was designated as a joint usage / research center (the Center for Lunar and Planetary Exploration Archive Science) by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) in April 2019. Following the designation, the former ARC-Space (Aizu Research Cluster for Space Science) was reorganized from one of the subordinate organizations of the Center for Advanced Information Science and Technology (CAIST) into the current Aizu Research Center for Space Informatics (ARC-Space), an independent research center.