Annual Review 2011

Message from the President

People in Fukushima Prefecture are still in deep sorrow facing the East Japan Earthquake and the following accident in Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. According to the Vision for the Revitalization in Fukushima Prefecture, the University of Aizu officially announced to establish the revitalization center. The main missions of the center are health data management of residents in Fukushima and increase in job opportunities for young people.

In Fukushima, many kinds of power plants have operated: nuclear plants, conventional oil and coal plants, hydraulic plants, geothermal plants, wind plants, solar plants and advanced integrated coal gas combined cycle plant. Before the disaster, about 90% of electricity generated in Fukushima was transmitted to metropolitan area. Electricity has always been strategic product in the history of Fukushima and, even after the disaster, the situation is unchanged. Since last year, our university received offers from many IT companies to initiate projects on efficient reduction in energy consumption of our community and especially on renewable energy. Fujitsu aims to make the City of Aizu-Wakamatsu into a smart city, and NEC aims to optimize energy consumption in a supermarket. For these projects, cutting-edge information technology is required. NTT East Japan has also a plan to introduce sophisticated tourism employing advanced smart phone technology. Further, Accenture and NTT DOCOMO have established a remote test center for smartphone application software in our University-Business Innovation Center since smartphone application market is rapidly growing.

So, we already started the projects to revitalize economy in the community and increase job opportunity. We would like to make the best use of our results for society and business/industry in near future.

My best and warmest regards to all of you.

October 16, 2012

Shigeaki Tsunoyama

President