MEXT Budget for the Promotion of Science and Technollogy"Kyoto University-Canon joint research project" Innovative Techno-Hub for Integrated Medical Bio-imaging

Structure

• Restructuring of the IP organization to promote university-industrial partnership

We have defined a framework for intellectual property (IP) created through the Kyoto University-Canon research partnership, and have worked in cooperation with the university-industrial partnership center and project support bureau to establish systems for managing IP related to the project. This has accelerated many procedures related to the patenting of inventions resulting from the joint research, transfer of profits to the partnership, joint and independent investment, restrictions on exploiting monopolies, restructuring of IP systems to promote commercialization of inventions, and the university-industrial partnership.

• Personnel recruitment structural reforms: Adoption of annual salaries

To recruit capable and independent researchers based on their abilities irrespective of age, sex or nationality, and to promote interdisciplinary research, we have introduced the system of the necessary annual salaries for Associate professors, Assistant professors and PhD researchers at both Kyoto and other universities, We have also begun a flexible salary structure which allows staff to adjust their salary range to give an added career-path incentive.

• Nurturing multilingual talent in engineering, medicine and informatics

We have established the Advanced Medicine Engineering Research Unit (2007) on a university-wide level, as well as the Biomedical Engineering Research Department (2008) within the Graduate School of Engineering’s Advanced Research Institute, to coordinate the project’s dedicated teaching staff and researchers. We also enroll graduates participating in project research and those who are interested in medical engineering-related fields in the Graduate School of Engineering’s integrated biomedical engineering course (from 2008) and the Graduate School of Medicine’s medical engineering informatics joint course (from 2008). This adds to the existing curriculum to foster talent in multi-disciplinary medical engineering fields with the participation of the teaching staff of the Graduate Schools of Engineering, Medicine and Informatics.

• Establishing Clinical Research Centers

We are planning to establish Clinical Research Centers to carry out clinical research using the prototype devices newly developed by the project and to give feedback to basic research groups.

• Establishing the medical engineering integrated education and research center

We have begun preparations to establish a research base with the capacity to give ORT (On-the-Research Training) which, along with the clinical research centers described above, will give Kyoto University a world-class education and research center in integrated medical engineering.

• Designating a Super Zone

In 2008, the project proposed by Kyoto University to create innovative devices for diagnosis and treatment through imaging technologies was designated an advanced medical development zone (Super Zone). The theme of this zone is the use of imaging technology to create innovative diagnostic and treatment devices, where optical imaging devices are the principal ones being developed by the CK project. Use of this zone can be expected to speed up and improve the work being carried out.