Introduction

We draw up the RIEC vision based on the institute missions, which would contribute to the Tohoku University Global vision.

Faculty’s Vision (Basic Philosophy and Mission)

The Research Institute of Electrical Communication (RIEC) has a long tradition of original research and achievements in the fields of high-density and high-level information and communications. With this in mind, and taking advantage of the mobility enjoyed by a university-affiliated institute, we continually investigate and research scientific principles and applied technologies aimed at creating communication technologies that enrich humanity, including harmonious man–machine interfaces, and continue to serve as the center of information and communication research in Japan.

Organizational Policies for Reinforcing Functions

We are pursuing the following goals, with the aim of resolving problems associated with information and communication research and contributing to the advancement of human knowledge.

• We continue to pursue diverse and multifaceted research projects in order to accomplish our mission of creating communications technologies that enrich people’s lives.
• We promote research and development on energy-efficient, high-speed, and high-capacity information and communication technologies to produce highly applicable and disaster-tolerant systems.
• We promote research and development on novel and advanced information processing and communications by exploiting state-of-the-art information and communication technologies.

Strategic Focus and Major Policies

1. Promotion of research on information and communication technologies for the betterment of human knowledge

We promote multifaceted cutting-edge research in the fields of information and communication, in line with the objectives of “Achieving World-Class Status and Leaping Ahead”. For this purpose, we focus on promoting diverse state-of-the-art research, student and recurrent education through research, our own activities as a joint usage/research center, international partnerships, and partnerships with private industry.

2. Capacity-building for diverse research activities

In order to promote diverse research activities, we exercise flexible institute management that allows for dynamically formed research groups to meet the needs of various research projects. Under our new flexible management system, researchers belong to basic research divisions according to their research areas, and they can also participate in research groups formed by the institute. In order to recruit more diverse research staff members, including female and foreign researchers, we have allocated our own funding for new research positions.

3. Training researchers and engineers through state-of-the-art research

We promote educational and professional development as an integrated part of our state-of-the-art research activities, and we train top-level researchers and engineers in collaboration with related graduate schools. Through our international partnership programs, we introduced a support program for study and research abroad. We also provide open lectures for recurrent education.

4. Promotion of activities as a joint usage/research center

As a joint usage/research center, we promote nationwide cooperative research projects, which are activities central to the institute. In order to encourage diverse research projects, we reformed our joint project research systems and classified our projects into five categories, according to their main objectives: large-scale project proposals, fostering young researchers, providing support for novel and preliminary research, international joint research, and inter-organizational research.

5. Internationalization and promotion of international joint research

We introduced a new program that sends a young researcher abroad each year. We promote international research by strengthening our system for visiting foreign scholars, as well as through the RIEC international symposium. Based on the goal of promoting world-class international joint research, we introduced “international collaboration” as one of the five classifications of our cooperative research projects.

6. Promoting academia–industry collaboration

We propose goal-oriented academia-industry collaboration, based on our research results, and promote the establishment of co-creation research centers and joint-research programs.