Our school is located in Nara, the spiritual home of Japan, which boasts a rich cultural heritage and exquisite scenery. NAIST rests in the Kansai Cultural Academic Cities of Kei-Han-Na, representing the crossroads of Kyoto, Osaka and Nara, and is surrounded by many advanced public and private research. In the 8th century, when Heijoukyou was the capital of Japan, Nara was the center from which cutting-edge technologies were propagated to other areas of Japan. As we stand at the beginning of the 21st century, Nara is once again in the limelight as a place where leading science and technology is born every day.

Our school has state-of-the-art research facilities to allow comprehensive studies in a broad range of research fields. The immense effort and resources committed to building this rich research environment underline public and governmental expectations of NAIST: to educate and prepare the next generation of researchers, and to contribute to national policies on promoting science and technology as a key to Japan’s success in the global economy. We are working very hard, day and night, to live up to those expectations.

The core objective of the Graduate School of Materials Science (GSMS) is to apply a rich understanding of the mechanisms governing substances at the electron, atomic and molecular levels in order to create completely new substances and structures, and to invent new functions, toward the development of new materials that are valuable to the future of humankind.

To this end, GSMS aims to develop “photonic nanoscience” as a research subject for the 21st century, thus reorganizing material science based on research which focuses on the interaction between materials and light. Through promoting research from the viewpoint of “see with light”, “create with light” and “transmit with light”, we pursue interdisciplinary research that ignores the boundaries between existing disciplines such as physics, chemistry and biology. We are confident that the findings of our research will continue to provide basic technology that will impact upon the next generation’s industries and society in a wide variety of fields such as information technology, biotechnology, medicine, energy, environment and space science.

Through a systematic interdisciplinary education which strives to foster student creativity, we cultivate talented researchers who will offer great support to industry and academia in the future. Our systematic education program was selected by The Initiatives for Attractive Education in Graduate School (The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science; 2006-2008).

Every member of the GSMS faculty is a leading researcher who has made significant scientific and technological contributions to his/her field. I sincerely hope that many individuals with a strong interest in conducting world-class research will join us in building a new academic tradition as we solve the problems of our society.