future university - hakodate　Message From The President

Message from the President

en_general_gakutyou_keireki

President Nakashima was born in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture. He went to school in Kobe until high school. In 1971, he entered the Department of Science at Tokyo University, aiming to become a physicist. Then, he became bilingual in the Kansai and Tokyo dialect.s (He also speaks standard Japanese.) He became disillusioned with general education courses of the university, and stayed a little longer there. He finally found the object he could devote himself to, which was called “computer”, and went up to the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology in 1978.

Since then, Nakashima had conducted research on Artificial Intelligence by using computer knowledge as a weapon. He promoted the logic-based language “Prolog” by introducing it to MIT during his studying there (1978-79), and writing about it in Japanese textbooks (1983) for the first time in Japan.

In 1983, Nakashima entered the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology Japan (AIST), the top-level research institute of Artificial Intelligence in Japan at that time. (In the University Ranking in Science published in 2004 by Kadokawa-shoten, AIST still maintained the 1^st place in Japan and the 10^th place in the world.) He had served in various positions including: the Director of the Collaborative Architecture Planning Office; the Chief of Communication Intelligence Laboratory; the Head of the Department of Information Technology; and the Director of Planning Office. When AIST was incorporated in 2001, Nakashima became the Director of the Cyber Assist Research Center.

Nakashima has changed his research fields three times, although his research interest has always lied on Artificial Intelligence. First, his research was on knowledge representation by Prolog. When he worked at the Collaborative Architecture Planning Office, he studied on multiagent. Finally, he concerned himself with ubiquitous computing when he worked at the Cyber Assist Research Center. Nakashima takes pride that all research fields are considered as a pioneer in research trend.

Nakashima puts an end to his life as a researcher when he became the President of Future University – Hakodate in 2004. From then on, he plans to concentrate all his energies into education, fostering of younger people, establishment of information processing research methodology, and social application. Nakashima thinks that Hakodate is an appropriate-sized city for social application of information processing technology. Therefore, he aims to activate local industries by a stunning application that no one has ever thought about before.

Nakashima has various hobbies, but does them only a little better than amateurs. He likes to operate various kinds of machines including bicycles, cars, motorcycles, (He used to enjoy off-roading such as motorcross and trial, and now enjoys touring.) light aircraft, and yachts, etc. He wants to operate trams if possible. He also likes to swim, ski, and play tennis. He has enjoyed some cultural hobbies like putting together plastic models and railway models, playing GO, reading science fictions (in original languages), audio, and camera.

FUN Vision of the Future

As a public university, one primary objective for Future University Hakodate (FUN) is to positively contribute to the local community. Therefore, our main goal must be to establish ourselves an intellectual leader in the Hakodate region. Our educational strategies are a means for achieving this! ! . And the research is means for the top-level education. However the actual process is in the reverse order. First of all, we have to do ensure high level research, supported by effective learning. These combined efforts allow FUN to contribute to the local community.

To be viable for the future, FUN must be able to maintain a global presence for our activities. We therefore need to strengthen and expand the exchange of personnel . both students and faculty . at domestic and international levels.

As a location, the Hakodate r! ! egion is an ideal place for the kinds of research undertaken at FUN. Information Processing technologies possess massive potential for changing our society across all sectors. With time and space for creative research, Hakodate serves as an ideal platform for pursuing this type of research. Furthermore, the outcomes and fruits of research conducted at FUN can play an important role in revitalizing Hakodate’s greater community and culture.

Around the core concept of "information", there gathered our faculty members on complex systems, information science, design, cognitive scienc! ! e and communication. Cognitive science and communication forms the base, on top of which media architecture and complex systems form two columns. And design will be on top of them as a roof. The concept of design should not be understood as its narrow sense. Our design covers not only of things but also of processes including new societal systems enabled only by information processing technologies.

We hope that the department of complex systems will find a new core other than "the study of non-linear dynamics", which was the core of the first stage, and move toward design of complicated (not necessarily complex but maybe complex) systems.

Department of media architecture should take its name to mean not only the architecture of information processing systems but also architecture of the societal systems.

The study of cognitive science can contribute both to media a! ! rchitecture and complex systems and vice versa.

The communication ability of our students is recognized widely. We want to widen the concept to Liberal Arts. In other words, we want students have their own opinion to communicate with others.

It is hard to state a concrete image of students graduating from FUN, but we can at least say that they should have their own viewpoint and able to communicate (it and other things) with others.

We set three education paths for students:
(1) for those finishing only with undergraduate course,
(2) for those continuing to the master course, and
(3) for graduate school.

Message from the President

FUN Vision of the Future

General FUN Information