Greeting

PM

TAKEDA Hiroko

In formulating a vision for the T-GEx program, we reviewed the career path of outstanding researchers who would serve as role models, with reference to Nagoya University’s experience in running various training programs designed for early-career researchers. One of the main objectives of this program is to develop researchers who will become new role models, and to create a virtuous cycle of training early-career researchers of the next generation in the Tokai region. To this end, the T-GEx program aims not only to establish a consortium in cooperation with academic institutions and companies with different characteristics and to provide opportunities to acquire transferable skills and to build research networks within the consortium, but also to prepare a research environment and provide necessary support for early-career researchers so that they can be actively involved in diversified collaborative research activities.

The development of collaborative research activities among early-career researchers in the Tokai region through the T-GEx program will also have the effect of encouraging their successors to discover and tackle new research agendas. We will make every effort to facilitate the smooth running of the program so that the T-GEx will develop as the best pathway to outstanding research achievement for the future.

Vice President of Nagoya University / Director of the Program

KADOMATSU Kenji

Fostering early-career researchers is one of the most important challenges for Nagoya University to become a world-class research university. We have developed a variety of programs to train early-career researchers to enhance Nagoya University’s research capabilities. The Tokai Pathways to Global Excellence (T-GEx) project is one such program. It aims to develop Nagoya University and the Tokai region into a hub for global research by forming a consortium in cooperation with academic institutions and companies inside and outside of the region to develop top researchers. These researchers will manage world-class research centers and international industry-academia collaboration projects. The program will also train venture entrepreneurs who can expand their businesses globally.

Currently, we are facing many global challenges such as SDGs, climate change, food security, and pandemics. The cornerstone of the program is to find solutions for these critical global issues. To tackle these challenges, there must be collaboration across national borders and cultural contexts by academic researchers and practitioners working for business organizations. These people specialize in different disciplines while producing concrete research outcomes through their abilities to advance research and identify/set the future course of knowledge development.

Our future depends on the solutions to these accumulating global issues. We aim to nurture top-class human resources who will lead the way in solving these issues from not only Nagoya University but also from the Tokai region, thus making significant strides for the future. This is the core purpose of launching the T-GEx program in our university.

Vice President of Gifu University / Co-Director of the Program

WANG Zhigang

Gifu University will participate as a co-implementing institution in the “Tokai Pathways to Global Excellence (T-GEx)” project, which is part of the “Strategic Professional Development Program for Young Researchers” of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), together with Nagoya University, the representative institution of the project.

Gifu University has introduced various systems to support researchers; for example, an annual salary system, a tenure-track system, a cross-appointment system, and a system for assigning research assistants for the balancing of research with child and the elderly care. As for the personal evaluation of faculty members, we have established a system to quantify the evaluation from short and mid-term perspectives for the proper evaluation of performance. In addition to the “annual evaluation” conducted every year, we introduced a “checkpoint evaluation” which is conducted every six years. Furthermore, we are also working to develop young research personnel through the establishment of the “Young Leaders Cultivation Program” (G-YLC), which aims to cultivate outstanding world-class researchers. Through T-GEx program, we will send out to the world the “groundbreakers” of advanced knowledge who will realize creative solutions to global issues.

Program Overview

T-GEx Program’s Vision of World-Leading Researchers and Development Policy

T-GEx aims to nurture advanced knowledge “groundbreakers” who will break down barriers between countries, sectors, disciplines, and cultures. They will continuously tackle new challenges by linking knowledge creation and experiences from different fields while leading teams to solve critical problems that our world is facing. T-GEx knowledge “groundbreakers” will disseminate innovative impacts on industries and society by running international and/or interdisciplinary collaborative projects that usher in cutting-edge global academic trends, or developing industry-academia collaborations or businesses that serve societal needs.

Program Outline

Nagoya University leads the T-GEx program in cooperation with Gifu University. The first main objective of the T-GEx program is to support the development of early-career researchers in a direction of their own choosing (tracks). Possible directions include becoming a principal investigator (PI) who heads a large-scale international and/or interdisciplinary collaborative research project, or a highly-qualified professional who actively engages in industry-academia collaborations or starts a business inside or outside of Japan. In so doing, the T-GEx program achieves its second main objective of creating a positive growth cycle of training talented researchers through which role models for the next generations will arise. For this purpose, the T-GEx program will undertake efforts in the following three areas. First, we will build a consortium with affiliated academic institutions and companies in the Tokai region and beyond to provide opportunities for early-career researchers to learn transferable skills and build research networks. Second, the program offers several research grants to encourage early-career researchers belonging to the consortium institutions to develop collaborative research projects among their institutions. Finally, to reinforce these initiatives, the program will commit to the improvement of research infrastructure within the consortium by promoting gender equality and diversity measures, and accelerating digitalization.

Support Action

T-GEx Fellows will benefit from a wide range of support measures including development of a research environment, research funding, skill booster modules, research ability assessment tools, and assistance from mentors, advisors, and URAs.
In addition, T-GEx Associates will be granted the status of a visiting researcher at Nagoya University and will have access to the facilities and equipment of Nagoya University, as well as opportunities to participate in various programs and to interact with T-GEx Fellows.

Management Structure

Advanced Knowledge “Groundbreakers” Consortium

Cooperation Structure

Cooperation Network Image

Implementing institution

Representative institution

nagoya-u

Co-implementing institution

gifu-u

Partner academic institutions

  • mie-u
  • tut
  • nanzan-u
  • meijo-u
  • chubu-u
  • NINS

Partner companies

  • TOYOTA
  • tytlabs
  • デンソー
  • aichidenki
  • MTGventure
  • Beyond Next Ventures
  • neorex
  • daido
  • raqualia
  • Taiyo International
  • toray

International partner organizations

  • JICA

Overseas partner institutions (overseas universities, etc.)

  • stanford
  • UBIAS
  • imec

Brochure

Program Brochure