Greetings

Tomoyuki Shirai, Director, Institute of Mathematics for Industry, Kyushu University
October 1, 2026

The Institute of Mathematics for Industry (IMI), Kyushu University, was established in April 2011 as Asia’s first research institute dedicated to industrial mathematics and celebrated its fifteenth anniversary in April 2026. Since its designation in April 2013 by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology as the Joint Usage/Research Center for Advanced and Fundamental Mathematics-for-Industry, IMI has pursued, as an integrated endeavor, both cutting-edge mathematical research and the development of mathematics that responds to challenges arising in industry, society, and diverse academic fields. Carrying forward this history and its underlying principles, I have now taken up the position of fifth Director of IMI, effective October 2026.

Over the past fifteen years, the environment surrounding mathematics has changed dramatically. Rapid advances in artificial intelligence, particularly generative AI, quantum technology, and data-driven science; the growing sophistication of cybersecurity technologies; and major challenges arising across a wide range of fields—including energy and the environment, weather forecasting, disaster prevention, medicine, transportation and logistics, and materials and manufacturing—all require the power of mathematics to abstract complex phenomena, uncover underlying structures, quantify uncertainty, and verify the validity of the conclusions obtained. AI, in particular, is not only a technology founded on mathematics; it is also becoming deeply involved in mathematical discovery and proof, computation, and the exploration of research literature, thereby transforming the very methods of mathematical research. In this new era, mathematics is called upon more than ever not only to provide the foundations for technology, but also to assess its limits and reliability and to identify the questions that truly matter to people and society.

“Mathematics for Industry” (MfI), as expressed in the name of our Institute, is a new field of mathematical research that integrates and reorganizes pure and applied mathematics into flexible and broadly applicable forms in response to the needs of industry, thereby providing a foundation for the creation of future technologies. It is an endeavor that identifies essential questions arising in industry, society, and the sciences; elevates them into mathematical problems of universal significance; creates new concepts, theories, and methods; and returns the resulting knowledge to the settings from which those questions emerged. This two-way cycle lies at the heart of IMI, and supporting and advancing it will remain our enduring mission.

All of IMI’s activities are grounded in deep, freely pursued, and diverse mathematical research. We will continue to value fundamental research undertaken with a long-term perspective and to support an environment in which researchers can pursue questions of fundamental importance without being guided solely by considerations of short-term utility. At the same time, we will place particular emphasis on mathematical optimization and modeling, quantum mathematics, statistics and data science, mathematical cryptography, and research exploring new relationships between AI and mathematics. We will foster a research culture in which researchers can move freely among fundamental theory, applications, computation, data, and implementation. Through this research environment and culture, we will create the rich and distinctive interplay between mathematical research and society that is characteristic of IMI.

In our engagement with industry, other academic fields, and local communities, we aim to build a framework for co-creation that takes technical consultation and matchmaking as its starting points and provides coherent, sustained support at every stage—from identifying challenges and forming research teams to designing joint research projects and internships, putting research outcomes into practice, and evaluating those outcomes. Through the Mathematics for Industry Platform (MfIP), for which IMI serves as the core institution, we will collaborate with mathematics and mathematical sciences communities throughout Japan and serve as an open point of contact responsive to society’s diverse needs.

As a Joint Usage/Research Center, we will administer research meetings, short-term collaborative research projects, support programs for early-career researchers, and international collaborative research in a flexible and appropriate manner. We will provide a forum in which researchers from pure mathematics, applied mathematics, statistics, computational science, other scientific disciplines, and industry can come together across organizational and disciplinary boundaries. We will support a broad spectrum of activities, ranging from research that nurtures emerging ideas to interdisciplinary projects addressing societal challenges, and will disseminate the resulting achievements in Japan and abroad through journals, lecture notes, research reports, and other publications.

Human resource development is a central mission supporting both our research and our collaborative activities. We will integrate graduate education, research internships, study groups, workshops, tutorials, and international exchange and mobility programs. Building on a solid grounding in mathematics, we will cultivate individuals who can listen closely to the language of practitioners, formulate essential questions, translate problems into mathematical terms, collaborate with people from different fields, and communicate appropriately to society both the significance and the limitations of their results. We will also emphasize a sound understanding of research ethics, intellectual property, the responsible conduct of research, and the appropriate management of research results and information. In doing so, we will create a sustainable research environment in which early-career researchers, students, and people from diverse backgrounds can take on new challenges with confidence.

In the area of international collaboration, we will build on existing networks, including the Asia Pacific Consortium of Mathematics for Industry (APCMfI), as well as Kyushu University’s longstanding record of exchange, research, and education in Asia and Oceania. On this basis, we will strengthen our partnerships with Australia, New Zealand, and ASEAN countries, while drawing on the relationships that IMI researchers have established with universities and research institutions in Europe, North America, and elsewhere to promote international collaborative research across a broad range of fields. We will further enrich international research exchange through initiatives such as the Forum “Math-for-Industry,” an international research meeting organized by APCMfI, and carry its outcomes forward into sustained activities in joint research, education, researcher and student exchange, and industry–academia collaboration. Through these initiatives, we will deepen exchanges with researchers and students around the world and aim to become an international research hub that generates new mathematics of global significance from regional challenges. We will also actively promote open science while giving due consideration to research integrity and research security, thereby advancing international collaborative research in a trustworthy and responsible manner.

Since its establishment, IMI has developed steadily as Japan’s first research center for industrial mathematics, thanks to the outstanding leadership of its four successive Directors—Masato Wakayama, from April 2011 to September 2014; Yasuhide Fukumoto, from October 2014 to September 2018; Osamu Saeki, from October 2018 to September 2022; and Kenji Kajiwara, from October 2022 to September 2026—and to the tireless efforts of generations of IMI members. While carefully carrying forward this legacy and looking ahead to the Institute’s twentieth anniversary, I intend to develop IMI further into an international research hub that is grounded in world-leading mathematical research and creates new value through collaboration with diverse academic disciplines and industry.

Mathematics is not merely a discipline that provides answers to given problems. It is an intellectual endeavor that identifies the questions truly worth asking amid the complexity of the real world, creates new concepts and theories, and expands the range of possibilities for humanity’s future. Together with all the members of IMI, I will devote my utmost efforts to ensuring that the Institute remains a place where deep mathematics flourishes and encounters the challenges of society, where people and knowledge grow, and where the resulting achievements feed back into new mathematics. I sincerely ask for your continued support and cooperation.