During a recent visit, Professor Clive Roberts, Executive Dean (Science), met with Japanese partners to develop research collaborations in clean energy, quantum physics, smart grids and bioengineering.
As part of Durham’s longstanding connections with Japan, Professor Roberts visited Kyushu University, the Institute of Science Tokyo and Waseda University to identify further for new research collaborations. Professor Roberts was in Japan to take part in the Science and Technology in Society (STS) Forum in Kyoto.
Durham research excellence
Professor Roberts shared key areas of our research excellence with Japanese counterparts. As part of his discussions, Professor Roberts shared our experiences of leading a new £21m UK National Clean Maritime Research Hub, to decarbonise the UK maritime sector as well as undertaking new research into decarbonising heating and cooling using hydrogen; co-leading a £11.5m EPSRC Communications Hub for Empowering
Distributed Cloud Computing Applications and Research
(CHEDDAR) hub dedicated to advancing future communications. Durham is also part of two of five new national hubs, supported by a £160million investment, to harness the power of quantum physics.
Working closely with Japan
Durham has a longstanding connection with Japan and has many research and partnerships across the country.
Over the last five years, researchers across all four of our faculties collaborated with colleagues at some 200 institutions in Japan to produce over 600 joint publications. Collaborations span a breadth of disciplines to address global challenges including climate change and energy, health, emerging technologies and space and satellite technologies.
We’ve collaborated on work around the emerging deep-sea mining industry and the Health Interventions in Volcanic Eruptions (HIVE) project, which aims to inform better health interventions in humanitarian crises by researching the effectiveness of respiratory protection worn by people during volcanic eruptions.
Durham-Japan collaborations have conducted cutting-edge research to improve lives across the world, in fields such as emerging technologies, disaster prevention, sea-level change, and fertility science. Professor Chris Done (Physics) is one of the scientists leading the XRISM mission, a collaboration between the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) and NASA, with significant participation from the European Space Agency. We also have student exchange agreements with eleven Japanese universities.
We were recently visited by Mr. Jun Nakazawa, Economic Counsellor at the Japanese Embassy in London. We discussed our university partnerships in Japan as well as Durham researchers actively engaging with industry partners, including Japanese multinationals based in the North East of England.
RENKEI: promoting international collaboration
In 2021 we joined RENKEI, the Japan-UK Research and Education Network for Knowledge Economy Initiatives. This consortium comprising ten UK and Japanese universities has been at the forefront of strengthening UK-Japanese research collaborations. RENKEI supports our researchers in forging new connections to address pressing global issue. Professor Roberts’s visit to Japan coincides with the start of Pro Vice-Chancellor (Global) Professor Claire O’Malley’s tenure as the RENKEI UK co-Chair.
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