Hiroshi MATSUMOTO, the 25th President
It is my great pleasure to welcome all of you to the 9th AEARU Workshop on Web Technology and Computer Science. I would like extend a particularly warm welcome to the thirteen invited professors and twelve PhD students from various outstanding institutions in the Asian region. Welcome to Kyoto University!
The Association of East Asian Research Universities – AEARU – aims to create a forum to bring together leading research-oriented universities in East Asia, and to identify and explore areas of mutual interest for collaboration. The association is composed of the region’s most respected institutions, including Kyoto University. I personally had the privilege of serving as AEARU’s chairperson for just over a year until the end of 2009, and so I am well aware of the association’s significance and its contributions to academic collaboration among its members.
In 1998, Kyoto University was honored to host the first AEARU Workshop on Web Technology, and the series has continued since then, combining with the association’s Computer Science Workshop, which was originally held separately. For this ninth workshop in the series, we are focusing on cloud computing and the search for knowledge, and the organizers have put together very impressive program. I hope this workshop will provide all of you with a good opportunity to network, communicate the results of your research and promote international collaboration. On this occasion, we have invited not only professors, but also twelve PhD students, who will give presentations on their research undertakings at the PhD Round Table Sessions later today. I hope that session, too, will result in a fruitful exchange of ideas.
Ladies and Gentlemen, As some of you may not be so familiar with Kyoto University, please allow me to give you a very brief introduction. The university currently comprises 10 faculties, 17 graduate schools, 14 research institutes and 27 academic centers, and according to our latest figures, we currently have 2865 faculty members, 2556 staff members, 13,473 undergraduate students and 9,314 graduate students.
Kyoto University was established over 100 years ago, and its history has been colored by the unique cultural heritage and philosophy of Kyoto. Our academic tradition was founded on the concepts of self-reliance and self-respect – written in Japanese as jichō jikei. These words were memorialized in calligraphy by Professor Hiroji Kinoshita, the first president of the university, and they continue to guide our approach to education and research today. To this day, we continue to emphasize dialogue and cooperation, pursuing interdisciplinary collaborative research activities that cross the boundaries which have conventionally existed between the natural sciences and the humanities.
The dedication and achievements of our scholars in the Graduate School of Informatics has been acknowledged by the fact that they have been selected for numerous prestigious government programs to promote excellence in education and research, such as the 21st Century COE Program and the Global COE Program.
Advances in science and technology, coupled with the environmental issues we face today, are changing the very ways in which humanity and nature are perceived and understood. In this age of such profound change, Kyoto University is committed to the pursuit of a harmonious coexistence within the human and ecological community on this planet, and it goes without saying that the role to be played by IT and computer science in the realization of such an international community is vital.
Before I end, I would like to express my sincere thanks to the following organizations, which helped to make this workshop possible through their invaluable support: firstly AEARU itself, which kindly provided financial support to invite the participating PhD students. I would also like to thank the MEXT Global COE Program on Informatics Education and the Research Center for a Knowledge-Circulating Society, which is a co-organizer of the workshop; the Kyoto University Foundation, who sponsored the workshop; and NRI Network Communications, Ltd., who provided the workshop’s excellent conference support system.
関連リンク
第9回AEARU Web Technology and Computer Science Workshopを開催しました（2011年1月17日・18日）