University of Tsukuba Holds Cross-Pacific Meeting for U.S.-Japan Collaboration in AI
On August 21 and 22, representatives of the University of Washington, NVIDIA and Amazon visited Japan for discussions on the Japan–U.S. AI partnership. Following the basic agreement signed at the U.S. Department of Commerce in Washington, D.C. on April 9, the two days were devoted to practical discussions toward a full agreement, covering the fields the partnership will address and the model under which it will operate.
The meetings were held in Tokyo on August 21 and at the University of Tsukuba on August 22. In conjunction with them, President Kyosuke Nagata and Provost Tricia Serio of the University of Washington signed a letter of intent on cooperation in research and education.
Participants included Provost Serio and other officers from the University of Washington, Anne Szeto from Amazon, and Hirofumi Suzuki, based in Tokyo, from NVIDIA. The University of Tsukuba was represented by President Nagata; Yasuteru Shigeta, Vice President and Executive Director for Research; and Prof. Tetsuya Sakurai of the Institute of Systems and Information Engineering, who leads the partnership. The discussions reaffirmed the significance of this collaboration and moved a step further toward concrete cooperation.
President Nagata said that “collaboration across academic disciplines is the spirit of the University of Tsukuba,” adding: “We will approach issues such as CO2 reduction, gender, poverty and inequality from the standpoint of academia and scientific knowledge, and a strong partnership with our colleagues in Seattle is essential to that.”
Provost Serio commented: “Across many important fields — from medicine to robotics to climate change — we can create long-term, outstanding impact. That is what I look forward to most in this partnership.”
Anne Szeto of Amazon said: “We are keenly interested in cultivating new talent able to meet the future and in advancing difficult technical challenges, and I am very much looking forward to what we can achieve together.”
Hirofumi Suzuki of NVIDIA added: “Through this partnership and NVIDIA’s world-class accelerated computing solutions, we will enable an ecosystem for researchers and students and advance both the technical development of AI and its application in the real world.”
According to Prof. Sakurai, the partnership will run on two tracks: research projects that propose solutions to challenges in fields such as robotics, climate change, healthcare and the aging society; and community projects covering student exchange, entrepreneurship education and tutorials. Work is also under way to establish an AI education and research hub, with plans to expand it in the future into a comprehensive center for AI research.
