Photo/Illutration Naoto Ohtake, right, president and chief executive officer of the Institute of Science Tokyo, and Yujiro Tanaka, president and chief academic officer, stand behind a sign of the new university on its campus on Oct. 1. (Koichiro Yoshida)

The Institute of Science Tokyo, born through the rare merger of two major national universities, seeks to break into the ranks of the world’s top scientific institutions by combining its predecessors’ engineering and medical expertise.

“We aim to become a world-class science university that contributes to the advancement of science and returns the power of science to society,” Naoto Ohtake, president and chief executive officer, told a news conference in Tokyo on Oct. 1.

Yujiro Tanaka, president and chief academic officer, said, “We want to create a free and flat space by encouraging students to learn from each other’s cultural differences.”

The Institute of Science Tokyo ranks seventh among national universities in terms of operating revenue.

It was created Oct. 1 when Tokyo Institute of Technology and Tokyo Medical and Dental University, which boasted top research capabilities in Japan in science and engineering and medicine, respectively, integrated.

It was the first merger of national universities since Osaka University merged with Osaka University of Foreign Studies in 2007.

Ohtake, a former professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology, is responsible for management of the new university, while Tanaka, former president of Tokyo Medical and Dental University, oversees education and research.

The two predecessors were both granted the status of “designated national universities” on the expectations that they would conduct world-class education and research activities and were eligible for deregulatory measures and other preferential treatment.

However, they lagged behind in the budget size, the number of highly cited research papers and other areas, compared with leading U.S. and European science universities, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Imperial College London. 

The universities decided to merge to compete on a global scale by deepening collaboration between engineering and medical disciplines and through other initiatives.

A touchstone for the new university will be the government program to provide proceeds from investment returns on a 10-trillion-yen ($69.46 billion) endowment fund to designated “Universities for International Research Excellence.”

The university plans to apply for the program in a second call for applications expected soon.

It hopes to bolster research facilities and attract outstanding domestic and foreign researchers by receiving several tens of billions of yen annually in financial support.

Ten universities applied in the first round, and Tohoku University was selected as the only candidate recipient in September 2023.

The former Tokyo Institute of Technology, which was founded in 1881, had about 10,000 students in undergraduate and graduate courses in six departments, including science and engineering.

The former Tokyo Medical and Dental University, which was established in 1928, had about 3,000 students in the faculties of medicine and dentistry.

The faculty names and student quotas of the two universities will be retained for the time being.

The university headquarters is located at the former Tokyo Institute of Technology in the capital’s Meguro Ward.

(This article was written by Fumio Masutani and Hajime Ueno.)

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