The National Science Foundation's Tokyo Regional Office periodically
reports on developments in Japan that are related to the Foundation's mission.
It also provides occasional reports on developments in other East Asian
countries. Tokyo Office Report Memoranda are intended to provide information for
the use of NSF program officers and policy makers; they are not statements of
NSF policy.
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), an Independent Administrative Organization under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI)
As part of the Government of Japan reform and restructuring which commenced on January 6, 2000, with the creation of new central government institutions and the merger of several ministries and agencies, virtually all government research institutions, as well as other government organizations such as museums and hospitals, are slated to become Independent Administrative Agencies on April 1, the beginning of Japanese Fiscal Year 2001. That is, whereas these organizations will continue to receive at least baseline funding from their parent ministries, they will be free from many former administrative regulations and in a position to make their own decisions about their research directions and budget allocations, for example. In this regard, the most radical and far reaching set of changes involves the transmutation of the former Agency of Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) within the former MITI (Ministry of International Trade and Industry), consisting of 15 research institutes, into the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (the so-called new AIST.) (See RM #00-05, dated February 24, 2000.)
The following report consists of two parts: the first is a lightly edited text of a March 15, 2001, address by Hiroshi Miyamoto, currently Chief Senior Researcher at the National Institute of Bioscience and Human Technology of the old AIST, who is slated to become Director of the International Affairs Department of the new AIST. Dr. Miyamoto made his presentation at a Symposium on International Exchange of Industrial Technology organized by the Japan Industrial Technology Association (JITA). The second part is a commentary on the new AIST, based in part on other presentations at the March 15 JITA symposium and on oral communication with Japanese officials (including Dr. Miyamoto and his colleagues) who are knowledgeable about both the old and new AIST.
Lists of the research units within the old and new AIST systems are appended.
[NB: approximately a week prior to the March 15 seminar, the government announced that Hiroyuki Yoshikawa, President of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and the Science Council of Japan, would also become President of AIST on April 1.]
Text of address by Dr. Hiroshi Miyamoto
Start of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology
On April 1, 2001, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (the new AIST) will begin operations. The new AIST will be a research organization that will combine the 15 research institutes under the former Agency of Industrial Science and Technology (the former AIST) in the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) and the Weights and Measures Training Institute. The new AIST will be an Independent Administrative Agency that will, however, receive baseline funding from the Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry (METI) and whose operations will be consistent with the mission and broad policy goals of that ministry. AIST will be one of the Japan s largest public research organizations with research facilities in all regions of Japan defining Tsukuba as the pivot and employing around 3,200 people, 2,400 of them active researchers.
AIST's mission
Defined by the Establishment of the New AIST Law, AIST shall carry out activities related to:
(1)
research and development for industrial science and technology,
(2)
geological survey,
(3)
measurement standards, and
(4)
technology transfer to the private sector.
Specifically,
AIST conducts the research and development including the following three
missions, and
strives to publicize achievements and promote technology transfer:
(a) Measurement standards, geological surveys and research and development of fundamental technology for the establishment of the country's techno-infrastructure that require a high degree of neutrality, fairness, and reliability.
(b) Research and development in fields such as energy and the environment where a long lead-time and a high risk before industrial application are inevitable, and where the government is requested to be responsible for solving the technological problems.
(c) Innovative research and development to strengthen industrial competitiveness and the creation of new industries, where interdisciplinary approaches over a wide spectrum of research fields are necessary.
In carrying out the above missions, AIST relies on the openness of research communities and aims to be a mingling place of intellectual creativity. It brings together the research potential of universities, private industry, and public research agencies in order to produce pioneering results that attract worldwide attentions. At the same time, it contributes to the formation of intellectual property for the country and the world by actively publicizing research results and promoting standardization.
The new structure of AIST: a flexible and autonomous organization
The structure of the new AIST has been designed to maximize the advantage of an independent administrative organization, and to ensure the organization's autonomous functions.
For example, to appropriately adapt to the characteristics of individual research fields and respond to the multiple phases of each research mission and R&D project, several forms of research units are employed. The following two types of research units are the main bodies of the organization:
Research Centers. Research centers are units that take the initiative in specific areas to carry out projects strategically and intensively with the constraints of their resources input (i.e., budget, personnel and space). The distinguishing features of research centers are their goal-oriented organization, a limited life time (three to seven years) to carry out a mission, and a potential for direct impact on the academy and industry. Research centers are operated in a top-down management fashion. In the first period starting from JFY2001 (April 1, 2001, to March 31, 2002), 23 research centers are to be started. Each research center will bring in the best leader in each field not only from Japan but also from overseas.
Research Institutes. In contrast to the research center's top-down management and sharp edges, the research institutes carry out AIST’s missions defined in terms of medium-term strategies, with a broader coverage of a research field, and with a longer lifetime. Institutes take a bottom-up approach, with research directions coming up from the ideas of individual researchers, and aim to nurture specialized abilities in participants. The activities and results of research institutes are to be periodically evaluated, and reshuffling may be carried out when needed. For the start of the new AIST, 22 research institutes will be established according to the following three criteria:
(1)
Clear correspondence to social needs and AIST's missions,
(2)
Opening up new technological fields through integration of different
fields,
(3)
Full use of the potential of the organization by the combination of
technological familiarity
Research Support and Administration Departments. The research support and administration departments, backing up the research units, provide a self-managing function for the system to respond to domestic and international demands. Departments include the Planning Headquarters, providing control for the entire organization based on the top-down management of the President, the Technological Information Department, proposing national industrial technology strategies based on surveillance of the latest technologies and trends in research, the International Affairs Department, being responsible for making cooperative arrangements with foreign institutions and establishing and maintaining foreign bases of operations, and the Public Relations Department, performing the central function of propagation of the activities and results of the organization.
To provide feedback to the organization management through strict evaluation of research directions and achievements, the Evaluation Division, which appoints the evaluation committees consisting of members of universities, the private sector, and government agencies, is established.
Characteristics of the new organization: making use of the independent administrative organization system
The newly created AIST strives to be a creative research organization giving guidance and advice so that society can benefit from science and technology, based on the creative activities of each of the researchers and on international contributions. In addition, it provides the following functions that are unique to AIST.
(1) Opening new frontiers through integration of various scientific/technological fields. Building upon the former 15 laboratories, AIST has researcher and scientists in almost all fields of industrial technologies from biotechnology to earth sciences, and with integration of these fields new technological frontiers can be explored.
(2) Coordination of universities, private sectors, and government agencies by making of the regional nation-wide network. With the establishment of operational bases from Hokkaido to Kyushu making up a nationwide network, the integration of various technological needs with the seeds of research possessed by AIST can be pursued, and a place for wide scale intellectual creativity involving combined efforts of universities, private sectors, and government agencies can be provided.
(3) Contribution to industrial technology policy through close collaboration with government policy organizations. Together with 15 laboratories and Weights and Measures Training Institute, a part of the headquarters of the former AIST/MITI will also move to the new AIST, which makes collaborative operations of the policy agency and research and development divisions possible. Also, the new AIST can contribute to planning for industrial technology policy in addition to its research and development activities.
Tokyo-Tsukuba Two Headquarters System. Eight Research Bases, Including Odaiba. Planning functions related to the entire organization are located in the Tokyo headquarters within METI, and research planning and all other functions of headquarters are located in Tsukuba with the large-scale research and development base. Regional laboratories that were under the former AIST are incorporated into the new AIST. Research bases are located in Hokkaido (Sapporo), Tohoku (Sendai), Chubu (Nagoya), Kansai (Osaka), Chugoku (Kure), Shikoku (Takamatsu), and Kyushu (Tosu). At Tokyo's Waterfront Urban Center (Odaiba), a new research base, which serves as the core of the coordination between universities, private sectors, and government agencies, is established. Though most headquarter functions are centralized for greater efficiency in management, other functions including research activities are distributed nationwide.
Operation as an Independent Administrative Organization, Following the Elimination of Restrictions Imposed on the Former National Laboratories. The new AIST, being an independent administrative organization, is freed from the controls on personnel and structure that were unavoidable when it was a governmental organization. As a result, AIST dynamically allocates 2,400 research manpower to fields such as life-science, information technology, environment research, etc, based on its own strategy, where high social demands are observed. Quick and dynamic start-up of new research units based on interdisciplinary research fields can be made possible.
Since some conventional restrictions of accounting law and national property law are excluded for the new AIST, it is easier to actively pursue cooperative research and exploitation of intellectual property rights. In addition, with the introduction of an operational subsidy system, restrictions on budget expense items and on single fiscal year accounting are lifted and the degree of freedom greatly increases to allow more effective and efficient use of the budget. The lessening of the government's involvement and control increases, by an equal amount, the independent administrative organization s responsibility for subsequent evaluations and results obtained.
End of Dr. Miyamoto’s presentation.
Commentary
The ambitious transmutation of the old AIST with its eight research institutes in Tsukuba and seven research institutes scattered throughout the country into the new AIST organized into 22 more or less permanent institutes and 23 centers with lifetimes ranging from three to seven years (see Appendix) has been designed to try to resolve several widely perceived deficiencies with the pre-April 2001 AIST system. Among these the more important have been the absence of:
1. clear objectives for the 15 research institutes;
2. interdisciplinary and intersectoral communication and mobility; and
3. adequate interaction with and outreach to industry
Clarifying and defining research objectives
The names of the Tsukuba-based institutes that existed up to April 1 (see Appendix) suggest the breadth of the possible research activities that they could legitimately undertake: e.g., National Institute of Materials and Chemical Research; Mechanical Engineering Laboratory; National Institute of Bioscience and Human-Technology. Critics charged that the very breadth of these possibilities too often led to a quasi-academic environment in which senior researchers and their groups pursued their own interests, constrained primarily by their budgets and their interpretation of the scope suggested by the names of their respective institutes. As an extreme: the National Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Research was interdisciplinary only in the sense that it housed research groups from several different disciplines who pursued their own interests and rarely if ever communicated.
One result of this quasi-academic environment was that communication with industrial researchers or, indeed, understanding of the needs and objectives of industry on the part of AIST staff was, with a few exceptions, minimal. Obviously, this was regarded as a serious problem for an organization whose mission (as indicated by its name: Agency for Industrial Science and Technology) was to engage in activities related to industrial science and technology.
The names of the 45 organizational units that comprise the new AIST suggest that their latitude will be more sharply restricted so that they will concentrate on more specific objectives. This is particularly true for the research centers whose finite (three to seven year) lifetimes will require that they concentrate strongly on their mission-oriented objectives.
Interdisciplinary and intersectoral communication and mobility
Another perceived problem with the old AIST was the relative lack of communication and interaction among researchers at the various Tsukuba institutes and, indeed, within individual institutes. Of course this problem is by no means unique to the Tsukuba institutes or, indeed, to Japan. However, outside observers, including many from Japanese companies, argued that this lack of communication and interaction seriously hampered the institutes in carrying out their industrially-oriented mission.
Many of the eight Tsukuba-based institutes of the old AIST had 500 or more researchers. None of the 22 research institutes of the new AIST will have more than 100 researchers, and the centers will have even fewer researchers drawn from the AIST organization. Thus these units will be virtually obliged to forge collaborations with other research units if they are to work effectively.
Communication and interaction among the new research institutes and centers should be facilitated by the fact that most of them have complementary or overlapping objectives. For example, there are four institutes and four centers whose missions fall, at least in part, within the broad area of environmental technology; namely: the Research Institutes of Energy Utilization, Materials and Chemical Processes, Environmental Management Technology, and Green Technology; and the Research Centers of Environmental Chemical Substance Assessment, Life Cycle Assessment, Supercritical Fluids, and Fluorinated Greenhouse Gas Alternatives.
Likewise, activities in the broad area of nanotechnology will take place within the Research Institute of Nanotechnology and the smaller Research Centers of: Advanced Manufacturing on Nanotechnology Science and Technology, Advanced Carbon Materials, and Nanoarchitectonics.
A skeptic might regard the new research institutes primarily as scaled back, more narrowly defined versions of the former Tsukuba institutes. The research centers, on the other hand, represent such a departure from the former organization that it is difficult not to be impressed with the intention to create a truly new, revitalized AIST. The old AIST employed approximately 2,400 researchers in its 15 institutes. If those individuals were spread evenly among the 45 new institutes and centers, each would have slightly more than 50 active researchers. Centers, however, are being allotted many fewer AIST researchers (some claim that these will be among the more talented and promising), while they are actively recruiting other researchers from Japanese universities and industry, as well as from foreign institutions. Thus, one objective in creating the centers is to organize them as intellectually vital organizations. This objective is underlined by the successful recruitment of eminent scientists from outside the AIST system to head several of the research centers. For example Sumio Iijima of NEC, the discoverer of carbon nanotubes, will head the Research Center of Advanced Carbon Materials. Kotoku Kurach, Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Michigan, has agreed to return to Japan after 30 years to head the Research Center of Gene Discovery. Fu-Kuo Chang, an aeronautical engineer from Stanford University, will head the Research Center of Smart Structures.
As a final, encouraging example of the new AIST's determination to give primacy to scientific as opposed to bureaucratic considerations, the Director of the new AIST's International Affairs Department and his three deputies are all working scientists or engineers drawn from institutes of the former AIST, rather than career bureaucrats from METI.
Strengthening links with industry.
Institutes of the former AIST adopted a generally passive approach to industrial links, in essence hoping that some of their research work might, in fact, attract industrial interest. Apparently little of it did. A carrot and stick approach is to be employed to encourage the new research institutes and centers to establish stronger, more proactive industrial links. Although AIST's research units are guaranteed a certain level of baseline funding for the first three to five years, funding in most cases will be inadequate to carry out their missions fully. Thus they are encouraged, even obliged, to seek additional contract funding from private industry. Furthermore, funding levels for the institutes and centers after the first three years will depend on the results of external evaluation, and industry representatives are expected to sit on those evaluation committees.
As to the carrots: AIST will establish a Technology Licensing Organization (TLO) through a non-governmental organization–the Japan Industrial Technology Association (JITA). Individual researchers will be permitted to share in any patents on their discoveries and enjoy a portion of any financial return on those patents. Outreach to industry will also be encouraged by a Public Relations Department and Collaboration Department within the AIST's Planning Headquarters.
Appendix: Organization of the Old and New AISTs
The Old AIST (Agency for Industrial Science and Technology)
Eight research institutes in Tsukuba:
1. National Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Research,
2. National Research Laboratory of Metrology,
3. Mechanical Engineering Laboratory,
4. National Institute of Materials and Chemical Research,
5. National Institute of Bioscience and Human-Technology,
6. Geological Survey of Japan,
7. Electrotechnical Laboratory,
8. National Institute for Resources and Environment
Seven regional research institutes
1.
Hokkaido National Industrial Research Institute,
2.
Tohoku National Industrial Research Institute,
3.
Nagoya National Industrial Research Institute,
4.
Osaka National Industrial Research Institute,
5.
Shikoku National Industrial Research Institute,
6.
Chugoku National Industrial Research Institute,
7.
Kyusyu National Industrial Research Institute
New AIST (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology)
22 Research Institutes
Research Institute of:
1.
Geoscience and Technology
2.
Geo-Resources and Environment
3.
Marine Resources and Environment
4.
Energy Utilization
5.
Energy Electronics
6.
Environmental Management Technology
7.
Green Technology
8.
Computer Science
9.
Intelligent Systems
10.
Electronics
11.
Photonics
12.
Biological Resources
13.
Molecular and Cell Biology
14.
Human Science and Biomedical Engineering
15.
Neuroscience
16.
Materials and Chemical Processes
17.
Ceramics
18.
Structural and Engineering Materials
19.
Mechanical Engineering Systems
20.
Nanotechnology
21.
Computational Sciences
22.
Japanese Metrology Institute
23 Research Centers
Research Center of:
1.
Deep Geological Environments
2.
Active Faults
3.
Environmental Chemical Substance Assessment
4.
Developing Fluorinated Greenhouse Gas Alternatives
5.
Life Cycle Assessment
6.
Power Electronics
7.
Computational Biology
8.
Biological Information
9.
Tissue Engineering
10.
Gene Discovery
11.
Human Stress Signals
12.
Correlated Electron Processes
13.
Advanced Semiconductors
14.
Cyber Assistance
15.
Advanced Manufacturing on Nanoscale Science and Engineering
16.
Digital Manufacturing
17.
Macromolecular Technology
18.
Photoreaction Control
19.
Advanced Carbon Materials
20.
Synergy Materials
21.
Supercritical Fluids
22.
Smart Structures
23.
Nanoarchitectonics