Smart Universities and Cities｜Hideyuki Tokuda (Dean, Graduate School of Media and Governance)

2010.03.31

In late February, I accompanied nine first-year master's students (M1) and their professors from Keio University, Waseda University, Chuo University, and the Institute of Information Security on a study tour to Silicon Valley. These students had created excellent software for a joint review of the Advanced ITSP Program. We visited companies such as Google, Apple, VMware, NeuroSky, and Mozilla, as well as UC Berkeley and Stanford. We had the participating students decide in advance which companies they would be responsible for and prepare questions. However, for them, it was a new experience, and the results were mixed; some were able to ask their questions effectively, while others did not perform as they had hoped. One of the most memorable events was the meeting at Stanford. We had six people, including students in the Doctoral Programs and entrepreneurs from Stanford, join us to have various discussions in English with the ITSP group. First, in a "2 minutes madness" session, each person gave a presentation on their research or the system they created in the ITSP exercises, which also served as a self-introduction. Afterward, we discussed topics such as Silicon Valley culture, life at American universities, future career paths, and entrepreneurship. While the students in Stanford's Doctoral Programs held the value that it is normal, or even cool, to start their own business after obtaining their PhD, many in the ITSP group seemed to have the conventional mindset of "job hunting," and the option of "starting a business" felt infinitesimally small. It is very interesting to see what kind of change in mindset occurred among the ITSP group members as a result of this tour.

March 4 (Thu): I participated in an international workshop hosted by the Global 30 Program titled "The Role of Asia in a Global Information Society - University Strategies for Human Resource Development." We invited guests from Yonsei University in South Korea, UC Santa Cruz, Kyoto University, and Meiji University, and held a panel discussion on "The Role of Universities and Human Resource Development in the Asian Region," which included presentations on the initiatives at each university. Globalization is rapidly accelerating at Asian universities as well, and it left a strong impression on me that SFC must take the lead in developing research and education systems that meet international standards and in fostering global talent.

March 12 (Fri): A group of 18 faculty members from the School of Media Technology and Informatics at Södertörn University in Sweden visited SFC, accompanied by an embassy official. It is a new university founded in 1996, where they teach subjects such as Media Design, Media Technology, Computer Science, and Computer Game Studies. Their research themes are very close to those of the media design and IT faculty at SFC. They mentioned they were visiting universities in Japan with which they could potentially collaborate, and at SFC, they toured the Tokuda, Yasumura, Masui, and Nakanishi labs. Still, it is wonderful that a university can support a visit from a group of 18 people. It reminds me of when we visited universities in Europe, the US, and Asia with a group of over ten people as part of the 21st Century COE Program.

March 18 (Thu): Researchers specializing in ubiquitous computing from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland visited my lab. They gave an overview of the ARTEMIS project in the EU, and we had a discussion after showing them demos of the smart object services and Chameleon System developed in our lab. Just as I saw when I was invited to Oulu last June, the development of ubiquitous technologies for social implementation is accelerating.

Now, as for the topic of what I would secretly like to do, I thought about it for a moment and immediately recalled the following. One night, I would secretly prepare a massive number of smart dust Wi-Fi base stations (which don't exist yet...) and scatter them from the skies over Tokyo, transforming the entire city into a free-access Smart City overnight.

I can almost hear people saying, "There he goes, talking about pipe dreams again," but I genuinely believe that smart universities and smart cities are critical issues for the future.

(Date of publication: 2010/03/31)