This Center was established in 2015 to promote collaboration between mathematics and mathematical sciences and other fields within the interdisciplinary research spanning “Optics,” “Molecules and Materials,” “Life Sciences,” and “Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences” undertaken by the Institute of Electronic Science. Since then, under the leadership of its first Director, Professor Tamiki Komatsuzaki (2015-2018), and its second Director, Professor Masaharu Nagayama (2019-2024), we have pursued mathematical collaboration both within and outside the university.
Mathematics is a highly universal discipline, serving as the language for describing theories in the natural sciences. Specifically, it involves the mathematical modeling of phenomena. At this Center, four research groups are engaged in both theory-driven modeling and data-driven modeling.
Furthermore, to advance collaboration between various sciences and mathematics/mathematical sciences, the Center brings together diverse research fields (Faculty of Science (Mathematics, Chemistry, Earth and Planetary Sciences), the Graduate School of Information Science, the Graduate School of Engineering, the Graduate School of Advanced Life Science, the International Research Institute for Infectious Disease Control, the Graduate School of Economics, the Graduate School of Medicine, the Graduate School of Health Sciences, the Institute for Catalysis, and the Center for Human Intelligence, Brain, and AI Research and Education), and welcomes a total of 46 members from the these research fields who hold concurrent appointments.
Leveraging this university-wide collaborative framework, we aim to create an “open knowledge facility” that expands the circle of collaboration from individual researcher partnerships to interdisciplinary cooperation, establishing a central hub for mathematical collaboration at Hokkaido University.
The Center also actively pursues industry-academia collaborative research, continuously conducting joint projects with companies, including residency-based collaborative research in partnership with the Hitachi-Hokkaido University Lab. Furthermore, in fiscal year 2020, we established a collaborative division to promote joint research with the humanities and social sciences, actively pursuing interdisciplinary collaboration between the arts and sciences.
Our center strives to become a “meeting place” where mathematics and mathematical sciences encounter various other fields. We sincerely appreciate the support and cooperation of all concerned parties.
April 1, 2025
Professor Toshiyuki Nakagaki,
Director of Research Center of Mathematics for Social Creativity,
Research Institute for Electronic Science,
Hokkaido University