Message from the director
Hiroaki Ogata,
Director of Academic Center for Computing and Media Studies
Message from the Director
The mission of the Academic Center for Computing and Media Studies (ACCMS) at Kyoto University is to advance and develop “academic information” in collaboration with diverse researchers both within and outside the university. Academic information is not limited to bibliographic information (metadata) such as theories, laws, or research papers. It encompasses a wide variety of data that forms the foundation of all research activities, including observational data and simulations in the natural sciences, as well as educational and learning data in pedagogical settings. By accumulating and analyzing this vast amount of data, we aim to robustly support intellectual educational and research activities by humans, while leveraging machine intelligence, such as AI (Artificial Intelligence), to pioneer new frontiers of academic knowledge.
Toward this goal, the four research departments and the collaborative research laboratories at the Center work in unison to conduct research:
• Department of Networking Research: Research and development of cutting-edge communication technologies that securely and rapidly connect data, computers, and researchers.
• Department of Computing Research: Pursuing ultra-high-speed and large-scale computational processing using supercomputers and other systems.
• Department of Digital Content Research: Pioneering advanced media information processing utilizing machine intelligence (AI).
• Department of Social Informatics Analytics Infrastructure Research: Research, development, and societal implementation of infrastructural systems for collecting and analyzing large-scale data generated from the real world, including educational data.
We will broadly provide the cutting-edge insights gained through these activities both within and outside the university.
As for the computational infrastructure supporting the Center, in addition to the computing clusters of each department, we design, deploy, and operate one of the nation’s top-class supercomputers and edge computing infrastructures, which have grown increasingly important in recent years. Furthermore, in collaboration with universities and research institutions nationwide, we participate in the joint operation of “mdx,” a platform for building a data-empowered society, and play a pivotal role in the “Joint Usage/Research Center for Interdisciplinary Large-scale Information Infrastructures” (JHPCN), comprising the information technology centers of eight universities across the country.
Moreover, the university’s campus network, “KUINS (Kyoto University Integrated information Network System),” to whose establishment the Center significantly contributed, not only seamlessly connects computational resources and data within the university but also serves as a robust bridge to external networks. By experimentally utilizing such state-of-the-art hardware environments in our own research, we contribute to creating a more user-friendly and highly convenient environment for everyone across the university.
Our strength lies in our ability to share and collaborate on these advanced computational infrastructures not only with researchers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields—which have a high affinity for computation and simulation—but also with researchers in “all academic disciplines,” including the humanities and social sciences such as education, which were previously often considered unconnected. We promote joint research and societal implementation that transcend traditional frameworks, and the resulting research outcomes will not only be published as academic papers but also be widely released to the world as software and open data. Furthermore, we deepen our research targeting such diverse academic information itself, continuously exploring the further sophistication of academic information toward the realization of a data-driven society.
As described above, the AACMS consistently pursues both “basic research” in academic information and its “practical application” to enrich society, continuing to take on the challenge of constructing next-generation research and educational environments. We sincerely ask for your continued warm support and cooperation in the future.
