Japan Society for the Promotion of Science

Outline

JSPS’s mission is the advancement of science. In the past, the academic community has been at the core of advancing scientific research, but is now increasingly more driven by multifarious expectations and demands from the industrial and other sectors as well as society. This has given rise to an urgent need to create a platform upon which frontline researchers from academia and industry can meet and take time to engage in exchanges of views and information and swap reports on their research activities, thereby stimulating each other as they take on future science and technology challenges.
Against this backdrop, JSPS launched the University-Industry Cooperative Research Program, which in 2020 operates in accordance with the following conceptual framework. “To contribute to the elevation of research in Japan, a new platform is created for frontline researchers in academia and industry who, on their own volition, collaborate in areas and ways that bridge the two sectors in pursuit of important but not sufficiently addressed research topics and societal issues. Upon this platform, researchers from the two sectors transcend barriers of organization and domain in fusing seeds germinated from scientific research with the needs of contemporary society. Such university-industry joint research is carried out upon verification of new research* trajectories.”
* This includes basic, applied and developmental modes of research, pursued irrespective of direction or stage.

University-Industry Cooperative Research Committees(Term: 5 years)

JSPS supports bottom-up cooperative programs carried out based on the free ideas of frontline researchers from the academic and industrial sectors. By establishing University-Industry Cooperative Research Committees, a platform is created for them to engage each other in exchanges of views and information on basic, applied and developmental research in their respective areas of specialization, all within a free and informal atmosphere. Started back in 1933, this program has over the years seen the establishment of some 200 committees. As of April 2020, there were 50 committees in active operation (with 3,700 total members: 2,200 from academia, 1, 500 from industry).
 

University-Industry Cooperative Committees(Term: 5 years)

JSPS has established these committees as forums carried out by members of University-Industry Cooperative Committees who agree with JSPS’s operational principles and objectives. Implemented in an autonomous, self-driven manner, these forums work to advance memberinitiated bottom-up activities focused on societal issues. The fruits of these free and informal exchanges of ideas and information among forum members contribute widely to advancing scientific research. The members are not only responsible for the forum’s activities but must also take responsibility for their results.