Activities

AY2023 Intelligent Services: A Social Perspective workshop

The Tokyo Tech Academy for Convergence of Materials and Informatics (TAC-MI) held a two-day event entitled “Intelligent Services: A Social Perspective” on December 7 and 8 to brainstorm new social services for the future. This workshop was held in person at Oiso Prince Hotel, the same venue that hosted the TAC-MI International Forum from December 4 to 6. During this workshop, held annually, students aim to develop a broad perspective and boost their leadership skills by considering solutions to issues in future society. TAC-MI students and overseas students form groups, identify issues in future society, and discuss and propose solutions to these issues while applying knowledge and experience from their own research fields.

Workshop theme: From Efficiency to Sufficiency

This year’s event focused on “From Efficiency to Sufficiency”.　In the workshop, sixteen doctoral students from TAC-MI and seven overseas students formed six groups and thought about global environmental problems such as climate change caused by humans, take a broad view of “circulation” such as resource circulation and industrial circulation, and consider the total process for solving these problems.

Keynote speech and special lectures to deepen understanding of the theme

The first day began with an explanation of the workshop objectives to the participants. At the beginning of the group work, we invited companies and researchers to give keynote speech on “From Efficiency to Sufficiency” and special lectures on specific initiatives in order to deepen our understanding of this theme.

At first, Suguru Noda, a professor of Waseda University, gave a keynote speech titled ” From Efficiency to Sufficiency for Sustainability – Reconsider spatio-temporal scales and indicators with sufficiency viewpoints and re-solve efficiency” and explained in detail the perspective of this year’s theme, “From Efficiency to Sufficiency”.

Next, Takuji Waseda, a professor of the University of Tokyo, gave a special lecture titled “Are we crossing the climate tipping point?” about the impact of global warming on Antarctic ice and the global environment, as well as a project to reduce fuel consumption on ships as a countermeasure against global warming.

Finally, Yoshizumi Sasaki, Managing Executive Officer of Sumitomo Chemical Co., Ltd., gave a special lecture titled “Initiatives at Sumitomo Chemical for Carbon Neutral and Circular system for plastics” on carbon neutrality and plastic circulation system initiatives.

Finding topics, then zooming in on particular ones

After the lecture, the participants were divided into six groups and discussed future technologies, services, or mechanisms to realize a better future society that achieves both efficiency and sufficiency using material and information sciences. Each group was also joined by a graphic facilitator to stimulate the discussions and create visual representations of the participants’ ideas. First, the students thought about global environmental problems such as climate change caused by humans, searched for issues from the perspective of efficiency, and wrote them down on worksheets. Then, they exchanged opinions on the issues that came up and selected the issues to be tackled as a team.

Envisioning a better future society that achieves both efficiency and sufficiency

In the afternoon of the first day, students looked again the issue from the point of sufficiency, and envisioned a future society where both efficiency and sufficiency, and thought about future technologies, services, or mechanisms to realize a better future society that achieves both efficiency and sufficiency.

Late on the first day, each group gave a poster presentation and receive advice from faculty members and overseas advisors. After receiving feedback for the poster presentation, each group brushed up their ideas and revised the solution.

On the second day, students delved deeper into the technologies, services, and mechanisms to realize the future, such as whether there is any existing service that solves the issue, whether they achieve both efficiency and sufficiency, and whether they have negative effects, and then prepared for the final presentation.

Final presentations

During the final presentation in the afternoon of the second day, each group proposed and presented future technologies, services, or mechanisms to realize a better future society that achieves both efficiency and sufficiency. These presentations were held in hybrid format for both in-person and online participants. Approximately 90 participants, including TAC-MI program staff members, industrial collaborators, overseas advisors, and 2nd-year doctoral and master’s students of TAC-MI joined the session to listen to the final talks. Tokyo Tech Executive Vice President for Education Jun-ichi Imura was also present as a special guest. Each 7-minute presentation was followed by a 7-minute Q&A session.

Awards ceremony

After the presentations by each team, seven judges determined the winners of several awards while considering votes cast by non-student participants. At the awards ceremony, Imura presented the Originality Award, Moonshot Award, and Social Impact Award to the following groups and offered his comments on their presentation.

Award winners and presentation titles

In the workshop, the graphic facilitator immediately summarized the idea concept into an illustration, which made the image more concrete, expanded the idea, and made the group work more fulfilling. Together with the TAC-MI International Forum, this workshop provided an outstanding opportunity for participants to discuss their own research and workshop topics and to deepen exchanges with overseas researchers, faculty members, and TAC-MI students.