Greeting

Greeting

Yutaka HATA

Vice President and Director of Institute for Innovation and Social Value Creation

As of the last fiscal year (FY2024), the Institute for Social Value Creation has been newly started by integrating the Institute for Research Promotion and Collaboration and the Institute for Creative Cities and Regions. This marks the second year of the present institute. The present institute operates as an organization that creates social value through collaboration between industry, academia, and prefectural and municipal governments. From the perspective that it is necessary to select and integrate a wide variety of knowledge, skills, and human resources, which are achieved by transcending the boundaries between the humanities and sciences, and transcending the attributes of academic fields, to overcome the complex and uncertain state of the modern world.

Starting this fiscal year, we have established a “Comprehensive Collaboration Promotion Office” within the present institute to work on “industry-government-academia collaboration thoroughly” and have begun industry-academia collaboration activities that make use of our university’s strengths. Last fiscal year, in collaboration with Hyogo Prefecture, we raised external funds for the Synchrotron Radiation Research Facility (NewSUBARU) using the corporate version of hometown tax donations and worked to stabilize and upgrade the research facility as planned. Starting this fiscal year, we will further expand into the fields of human resource development and education.

The “Harima New Industry Creation Ecosystem,” an organization launched last year to create new industries in the Harima region, is also operating smoothly. This year, we signed a partnership agreement with the Amagasaki Regional Industrial Revitalization Organization, aiming to revitalize the manufacturing industry in Amagasaki.

Furthermore, competitive funding and publicly solicited projects are premised on the division of roles and collaboration between universities and external organizations. To improve Japan’s industrial competitiveness, it is necessary to create a positive spiral by collaborating with large and small companies, and with both the humanities and sciences between companies and universities, as well as with prefectures, cities, towns, and financial institutions. We hope that everyone will make full use of this organization, and together we will create new social value.

This marks my fifth year as Director of the Institute. This year’s new activities include:

1. Revitalizing activities in the Keihanshin area, based at the Shin-Nagata Branch (approximately 1,200 square meters) near JR Shin-Nagata Station.
2. Identifying the national movement toward achieving carbon neutrality and conducting research into new energy sources with a view to achieving carbon neutrality.
3. Revitalizing semiconductor device research, centered on the Faculty of Engineering and the Institute of Advanced Science and Technology for Industrial Science.

We hope you will also take a look at our institute’s website. Our university strives to be an institute with a low barrier to entry. We will continue to develop our activities as an institute that is truly useful to society, so we look forward to your continued support, guidance, and encouragement.

Our Institute

Institute for Research Promotion and Collaboration was established on April 1, 2011, to connect University of Hyogo with local industries, and to promote research cooperation. The institute has been renamed from “Institute for Research Promotion and Collaborationto” to “Institute for Innovation and Social Value Creation” as of April 1, 2024.