Yuta Kurashina: Interdisciplinary Research in a Consumer Society

With the progress of digitalization, the speed of consumption of goods is accelerating dramatically. Movies, which used to be something people naturally went to theaters to see, became available for rent at video stores, and now they can be streamed on the spot the moment someone wants to watch them.

This wave of modern society's "fast-paced" nature is also reaching the academic world. Papers that readers previously accessed by subscribing to journals are now becoming standard in open-access formats, where authors pay publication fees so that anyone can view them. Consequently, publishers can gain more profit by publishing many topical papers rather than publishing a single high-quality paper.

In this way, the number of published papers is increasing year by year, and the field is being swallowed by the wave of consumer society. New discoveries are necessary to write papers, but as the number of papers increases, it becomes quite difficult to generate truly new research. However, precisely because of this consumer society, it has become easier to obtain information on the latest research in various fields, and I have found new possibilities in interdisciplinary research that fuses cutting-edge fields.

From my student days until I established my own independent laboratory, I have belonged to five laboratories both in Japan and abroad. I have been engaged in different research areas such as vibration engineering, micro/nano material engineering, and bioengineering. While the direction of my research has always been toward medical applications, the technologies I handled were different in each case, allowing me to lead a stimulating life during my formative years. Based on these experiences, my laboratory is conducting challenging new interdisciplinary research.

Generally speaking, interdisciplinary research involves researchers from different specialized fields bringing their respective research together to produce a single result. However, continuous research is difficult because time, costs, and motivation vary among researchers with different specialties. Based on my own experience, I have found that interdisciplinary research is possible within a single laboratory, and I have been able to create new technologies through this approach.

Even in today's society where streaming is easy, people never stop going to movie theaters. This is because new movies suited to the times are created through daily efforts, and as a researcher, I strive every day to constantly produce research that can be given back to society.