Energy Sciences-Departments-Interdisciplinary Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology

Global navigation

About Us
Innovative and Engineered Materials
Entrance Guide

Energy Sciences / Solving Energy Issues from various Perspectives

Local navigation

Text

Mission of the Department of Energy Sciences

The recent rapid increase in energy consumption due to human activities is thought to be causing abrupt changes in the environment, such as global warming. No human activity would be possible without involving the transfer, conversion and utilization of energy. However, learning from our disorderly massive consumption of energy in the past, we must develop an eco-friendly and sustainable portfolio of technologies for secure energy future, including the exploration of diverse and clean energy sources, as well as energy systems that minimize the environmental load, as the essential parts.

In order to address energy challenges, such as diversification of energy sources, high efficiency of energy utilization, energy consumption with sustainable environmental effects, and international contributions in energy technologies, we need interdisciplinary studies across many different fields as well as research that cover areas from the basics through to application and development. The mission of the Department of Energy Sciences is to cultivate creative researchers and engineers with advanced knowledge and wide-ranging insight, who can survey the global environmental and social systems from the viewpoint of energy and tackle various energy issues.

Characteristics and Organization

Energy related problems are closely intertwined with environment and resource issues, food and population issues, and political and economic issues. Therefore, the examination of energy issues from a very broad perspective is an absolute necessity. It needs hardly be said that we cannot cope with these issues solely through existing compartmentalized fields of study. The Department of Energy Sciences is comprised of such interdisciplinary fields as physics, chemistry, mechanics, electricity, and material engineering, and aims to create a leading-edge field of study which can address these issues from many directions.

The Department of Energy Sciencess has Fundamental Chairs, which consist of full-time teaching staff of the department and collaborative teaching staff who belong to external collaborative research laboratories, and Cooperative Chairs and other Chairs that consist of teaching staff from other departments of Tokyo Institute of Technology. The Department of Energy Sciencess also works, in order to advance education and research, with other organizations of the Tokyo Institute of Technology such as the Research Laboratory for Nuclear Reactors and the Interdisciplinary Graduate School, and external research organizations, such as the Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, National Institute of Radiological Sciences, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and Toshiba Corporation’s Power and Industrial Systems Research and Development Center. The curriculum is designed in such a way that talented teaching staff and students from a wide range of fields in physical science and engineering gather at the department so that students can acquire abilities for examining energy-related challenges from the viewpoint of physical science and solving problems using the knowledge of the engineer. Moreover, students can get study guidance from more than one member of the teaching staff, and can receive either a science or engineering degree according to their choice.

KOHNO TOSHIYUKI