Noriyoshi Arai: A Clue to a Positive Cycle

The season when words like "internship" and "information session" line the laboratory calendar has somehow grown longer. I feel a strong sense that the time students spend focusing on their studies and research is being eroded, and as a result, companies are unable to deeply question "what they learned at university." It seems that short-term corporate experiences are leading to a de facto acceleration of job hunting, robbing time from education and research, which could impact the supply of talented human resources and industrial competitiveness.

This situation weakens the trust between universities, students, and companies, creating a negative cycle of "insufficient education," "time spent outside of learning," and "distrust." So, where can we change the flow? I hear that overseas, selection is based on university experience and achievements, and research presentations at top conferences can directly become venues for negotiation. Even though there are many excellent presentations in Japan, they are difficult to link to job-hunting activities. I believe the key to untying this "twist" is to shift the recruitment discussion even slightly from "potential" to "achievements," and for companies and universities to maintain regular contact.

My specialization is research into understanding and designing soft matter materials—used in familiar products such as detergents, cosmetics, and food—through computer simulation and AI. While soft matter has been utilized in industry for a long time, molecular motion is slow and complex, and non-equilibrium phenomena such as flow and deformation are dominant, making it difficult to predict performance through theory alone. That is precisely why highly skilled personnel who can navigate between theory, calculation, and actual development are essential. To be honest, I am not sure if every Japanese company needs highly skilled personnel. However, at least in this field, "learning deeply" directly translates to competitiveness.

That is why I established the Soft Material Engineering Simulation Consortium (SMECS). It is a forum aiming to restore trust in academia and pursue mutual benefits, centered on soft matter, simulation, and AI. At our discussion meetings, we work backward from "what we want this field to look like in 30 years" to discuss "what we should do now." Students polish their research results, companies find future colleagues, and universities use the challenges of social implementation as material for learning—I want to increase the number of small success stories where all three parties sit at the same table. Both recruitment and education are long-distance races. I want to share that resolve. The first clue to breaking the negative cycle might start from the casual conversations at a research meeting, closer to home than one might expect.