President of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology
Ryoji Chubachi

Since the beginning of the 21st century, humankind has been facing its unprecedented challenge: maintaining growth while at the same time protecting and improving the global environment. The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) aims to create a society with sustainable growth by developing industrial technology in Japan. AIST is expanding its role as an “open innovation hub” that works to enhance cooperation and communication between industry and society while providing opportunities for sharing and accumulating a wide range of knowledge to help create the innovations that society truly needs.

In order to ensure the continuous development of our information society, the amount of energy consumed in the area of communications needs to be greatly reduced. This is the reason why AIST runs the Vertically Integrated Center for Technologies of Optical Routing toward Ideal Energy Savings (VICTORIES), whose mission is creating an energy-efficient technology of Dynamic Optical Path Networks, capable of handling ultra-high-definition real-time video data which will be one of the most important applications for society in the future.

VICTORIES is an open innovation hub that brings together researchers from organizations including AIST, its 10 collaborating companies and universities. These personnel consistently engage in research & development on technologies for both devices and systems through vertical integration. Since it was founded in 2008, this center has developed important elemental technologies, such as silicon photonics optical switches and optical path conditioning technologies. Our objective for the next five years is to demonstrate the system operation of the Dynamic Optical Path Network technologies by integrating such elemental technologies developed at VICTORIES. We are firmly convinced that introducing our achievements into society, together with our collaborating companies, will lead to the creation of green innovations based on photonics technology.

Finally, we would like to appreciate your understanding and support on VICTORIES and our continual efforts.