Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Susume

2019/05/22

"Interdisciplinary collaboration creates innovation." Recently, I have had many opportunities to hear words to that effect. This is likely evidence that many researchers recognize the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration.

It was more than 10 years ago, when I was engaged in research as a Sakigake researcher, that I personally felt the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration. Sakigake is one of the funding programs of the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and is often called a gateway to success for young researchers. Having conducted research using light, such as optical physics and quantum electronics, since my student days, I applied for the Sakigake research area "Creation, Manipulation and Evolution of Light" and was fortunately selected despite the high competition rate of over 10 times. While Sakigake researchers and advisors dealing with optical science participated in the same research area, the field of optical research is very broad, and I was able to get to know many researchers from different fields with whom I had never interacted before. At the semi-annual camp-style area meetings, I had serious discussions late into the night with researchers from different fields I met through Sakigake about "how to conduct interesting research," and several groundbreaking collaborations were born from those discussions. This is truly the fruit of "interdisciplinary collaboration." Through this experience, I realized the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration, and after completing my Sakigake research, I launched a new Interdisciplinary Exploratory Research Group on Optical Science with volunteer researchers. This research group continues to this day and plays a role in interdisciplinary collaboration. I am also currently working on a strategy for a new collaboration with a researcher from the School of Medicine whom I met through this research group.

Interdisciplinary collaboration is also listed as a mission in the Quantum Electronics Research Group of the Japan Society of Applied Physics, which I have participated in since my student days. The Quantum Electronics Research Group is a traditional research group with a history of several decades. At the time of its establishment, researchers in the fields of optics and semiconductors, as well as researchers from universities, Research Centers and Institutes, and companies, engaged in intense discussions, contributing significantly to the development of semiconductor lasers. Since then, the purpose of the research group has been to seek further development through interaction between researchers with different research backgrounds through interaction with light. Having been appointed as the vice-chair of the Quantum Electronics Research Group this spring, I would like to firmly carry on the traditions of the group and promote interdisciplinary collaboration. I believe that interdisciplinary collaboration is what creates innovation.