The LDP Japan Economic Revitalization division’s Economic Cycle Committee visited the Empowerment Studio on a tour of Tsukuba.
On Thursday, May 7, 2015, the economic cycle committee of the Japan Economic Revitalization division of the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan toured Tsukuba, with a group led by the committee’s chair, member of parliament Yoshitaka Shindo, visiting the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), and the University of Tsukuba.
At the University of Tsukuba, they visited the Empowerment Studio, the base facility of the Ph.D. Program in Empowerment Informatics (EMP), where Hideo Kigoshi, Dean of the Graduate School of Pure and Applied Sciences, and Professor of Pure and Applied Sciences Hiroshi Tadano reported on the initiatives and results of the Tsukuba Innovation Arena (TIA-nano) program and EMP Program Leader Prof. Hiroo Iwata (Professor of Systems and Information Engineering) provided an introduction to the program, information on the Studio, and a demonstration of devices on exhibit. Mr. Shindo and the others experienced the vastness of the Empowerment Studio’s Large Space, the world’s largest virtual reality space, and tried out the Torus Treadmill, one of the devices on exhibit in the Studio and the result of research by Prof. Iwata. EMP second-year students Kosuke Sato and Hikaru Takatori took part in the demonstration, answering questions from visitors and providing other information.
This tour proved a valuable opportunity to publicize broadly the activities of the Program and the possibilities of the Empowerment Studio, which is nearing completion, through the LDP Japan Economic Revitalization division’s economic cycle committee.
