TOKYO INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Integrated Research Institute (IRI)

Solutions Research and its Significance in the University

At the time when the Integrated Research Institute (IRI) project was initiated under the Special Coordination Funds for Promoting Science and Technology from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, I was outside the university, serving as Executive Director of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. At the grand opening of the IRI held in October 2005 at the Keidanren Hall, I heard about “solutions research”. One of the guest speakers remarked, “Enterprises engage in solutions research when they have a problem, but it seems this organization is going to do solutions research where there is no problem.” The notion of solutions research in the university did not make me feel uncomfortable, however, and it struck me that my own research was in fact solutions research.

Consider “a surface emitting laser” that was one of my major inventions. This was an idea that came to me in 1977, when there was no need for a surface emitting laser nor any problem in industry such a laser would solve. For my part, however, I sensed a strong need for it, which I shall simply say was a future need. That was the need for a laser that would oscillate at a single wavelength and that could be fabricated in monolithic process like large-scale integration (LSI) circuit chips. When I presented this at a scientific conference, the response was that it was an interesting idea but unlikely to ever result in anything. When I was at Bell Laboratories in 1979 - 1980, researchers there took generally the same view. However, I researched for a way to establish the conditions for fabricating a semiconductor laser, and looked for the possibility of any and all means of bringing this to reality. In other words, I was searching for a solution. Now we have it, and its applications have extended to not only in optical fiber networks but also in unexpected directions. We find this tiny laser chip as a light source in gigabit Ethernet devices, for example, and in laser printers, computer mice, and other such applications.

Then, in 1979, the idea came to me for a planar microlens that would function as a lens even with a flat surface. I proposed a creation of lenses 1 mm or smaller in size (I named it microlens) by diffusing ions onto a glass substrate through the holes in a small planar mask. People asked me, even at academic conferences,“After you make all those tiny lenses, what are you going to do with them?” I envisaged that this monolithic fabrication method capable of creating large numbers of lenses in single batches would definitely be needed when optical communications and other applications emerged.

Here again the unexpected occurred. After a decade or more had passed, I was engaged in joint research with Nippon Sheet Glass Co., Ltd., and Sharp Corporation, and these two companies cooperated in evolving those earlier works on microlenses into an LCD projector. This turned out to provide an occasion for developing a higher luminance projector. This manufacturing method has since been replaced because it could not compete on price. I can say, however, that this was a case of solutions research with a long-term view that was conducted at a university and that developed in an unexpected direction.

Now universities are being called on to bring students the breath of something new, and to engage in research that will meet the society expectations. Research at Tokyo Institute of Technology in particular requires a sense of urgency that even embodies an element of extraordinary “disruptiveness.” Tokyo Institute of Technology was originally named as an institute, after all, not a university. This notion seems to have come from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which sets Tokyo Institute of Technology a good example as a research university.

As it happens, I was in the United States in October 2007, and I had an opportunity to look at a National Science Board report advocating Transformable Research. This is research that is disruptive and that carries high expectations for its outcome. It is an approach that seems entirely natural considering the research approaches taken in Engineering Schools of Tokyo Institute of Technology, so I interpreted it to mean research that will develop disruptively. I do, however, have some reservations about this approach. That is because I am concerned that it could end by distorting basic science, which is the science of discovery and understanding. I want those researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology who are engaged in fundamental science to be able to forge ahead in their pursuit of wonderful discoveries and new understandings.

When Prof. Masatoshi Koshiba was awarded the Nobel Prize, an interviewer asked him how neutrino research was going to be beneficial. He responded, with equanimity, "It will not be useful at all within the scope of your expectations." Now that is clarity. This is also the case with transformable research, which will not necessarily be compatible with scholarship intended to maintain the stability and safety of society. It is good, however, to identify an issue and look for its solution regardless of whether or not there is an industrial application at hand. We need to maintain an inner vision of how great it would be to address the challenge we have set. That is vital.