FY 2003 Project Selections Announced Under 21^st Century COE Program

The FY 2003 selection results for the 21^st Century COE Program were announced on 17 July. This program, launched by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) in FY 2002, is now in its second year of operation. JSPS conducts the program's selection and evaluation functions.

Among the program's ten fields, the following five were targeted this year: (1) medical sciences; (2) mathematics, physics, earth sciences; (3) mechanical, civil, architectural and other fields of engineering; (4) social sciences; and (5) interdisciplinary, combined fields, new disciplines. In March, project proposals in these fields were received by JSPS from Japanese national, public and private universities. Subsequently, the 21^st Century COE Program Committee, established within JSPS and chaired by Dr. Leo Esaki, president, Shibaura Institute of Technology, met to deliberate the proposals and make the grant selections.

The 21^st Century COE Program establishes, and infuses prioritized funding into development of, research and education bases of the highest world order in a wide range of scientific and academic fields. In so doing, it seeks to raise the standard of research in Japan's national, public and private universities, while fostering creative young people capable of becoming future world leaders in their respective fields. Ultimately, the Program works to build universities with a radiant institutional culture and strong prowess to compete internationally. Both the Program's application and selection approaches are designed in such a way as to achieve these ends.

Applications for grants are filed by the president of the university, who submits three documents: (1) the university's future vision, (2) a plan for establishing the COE in one of the university's PhD-level graduate schools or departments, and (3) a record of the university's research and educational achievements in the subject field. The reason for having the university president prepare and submit the application is to assure that under his/her leadership the COE will be created based on an institutional level strategy. In this way, the system embodies a novel concept for fostering COEs of the highest world order.

In the selection process, which extends over four months from the time the applications are received, members of the 21^st Century COE Program Committee conduct document and panel evaluations, taking into reference the views and comments of referees who are specialists in each of the subject fields. For those applicants that pass this stage of the review, a hearing is held with the university president or leader of the proposed COE, followed by deliberations among the Committee to make the final selections for the fiscal year.

In this selection process, consideration is given to the applicant's ability to meet the following four expectations:

This selection process does not focus on the scale of the proposed COE, but rather gives consideration to the distinctive nature of the research to be pursued. As a result, both universities in Japan's outlying regions and private universities receive more grants than they have under other funding schemes.

This fiscal year, 611 applications were submitted by 225 universities, from which 133 COE grants were awarded to 56 universities. A breakdown of the applications and selections is shown in the table and graphs below.

The budget for the overall FY 2003 program is approximately 33.4 billion yen. Subtracting the amount allocated for the second year of projects selected in FY 2002, some 15.8 billion yen is earmarked for this fiscal year's awardees. These funds will be distributed to the selected universities by MEXT.

Detailed information on the 21^st Century COE Program can be found on JSPS's Japanese website.
[ www.jsps.go.jp/j-21coe/index.html ],