Explanation of the Purpose of Parallel Session A
“New Scientific Knowledge and International Network to Support Global Sustainability” (2)

Responses to challenges that defy existing academic disciplines

To handle diseases that affect both animals and humans (such as influenza, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE)), Hokkaido University established the Research Center for Zoonosis Control in April 2005. Until the establishment of this center, areas of research into infectious diseases were vertically segmented: human diseases were handled by medicine, animal diseases by veterinary medicine and the ecology of animals by ecological science. This meant that there was no foundation for elucidating on routes that allow pathogenic microbes parasitizing wildlife to be transmitted to livestock, poultry and animals or for studying measures to prevent infections from spreading. Against this backdrop, we established the world’s first research center to carry out comprehensive studies on these diseases and establish a new academic discipline where the urgent task common to all humanity, i.e. zoonosis, will be tackled in a comprehensive manner.

Such initiatives that are aimed at consolidating knowledge from a range of fields (as opposed to the previous norm of acting independently) encourage researchers to recognize the mutual relationships between their own fields of expertise and other fields, enabling them to conduct research with a broader perspective. This leads to the creation of new scientific knowledge.

Establishment of international research networks

I believe that programs and initiatives like the ones I have just introduced should be promoted not only across the campus of each university, but also nationwide and across national boundaries. In this regard, I would like to talk about the establishment of international research networks.

International cooperation on a university level has so far generally been between pairs of universities. Recent trends, however, have seen more multi-campus cooperation (networks). There are many cases that illustrate this; to highlight only those that Japanese universities are involved in, examples include the International Association of Universities (IAU), The Association of East Asian Research Universities (AEARU), the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU) and Academic Consortium 21 (AC21).

While these networks are general in nature and cover a wide range of fields, there are also many university networks with more specialized fields, regions and activity programs.