The University of Tokyo... Todai !!!

Nothing is more fascinating that visiting the centres of excellence in Universities across the world as they are really the citadels of strength nations possesse. " A University stands for humanism, for tolerance, for reason, for the adventure of ideas and for the search of truth. It stands for the onward march of the human race towards ever higher objectives. If the universities discharge their duties adequately, then it is well with the Nation and the People." ...this we all know said Jawaharlal Nehru.

I was fortunate to visit two campuses of one of the greatest universities- The University of Tokyo, in Hongo and Komaba. The University of Tokyo was established in 1877 as the first national university in Japan. The University of Tokyo has a faculty of over 4,000 and a total enrollment of about 29,000, evenly divided between undergraduate and graduate students. As of 2006 there were 2,269 international students, and over 2,700 foreign researchers come annually to the university for both short and extended visits.

Prof. Yoichiro Nambu, a graduate of the Department of Physics, the University of Tokyo, Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago, and Professor Emeritus at Osaka City University, was awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics sharing the prize with Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Masukawa. He has contributed to the development of Physics by making a great deal of achievements reaching beyond the walls of many branches of Physics, including ‘The Discovery of Spontaneous Broken Symmetry’, which is common in various physical phenomena: the origin of elementary particle masses, superconducting phenomena etc.

According to Times Higher Education (THE) Supplement, Tokyo University stands on 17 th place in World University Rankings 2007. Further 'THE' comments: "Many Asian universities have higher scores in 2007 than previously. Their governments may regard this as more important than the number of appearances for their own country. The Asia-Pacific region now has five of the world’s top 30 universities, two fewer than the UK but four more than France. Some of the improvement may be due to their enhanced citations performance. But it is also very possible that these and other Asia-Pacific institutions will become yet more visible in the rankings in future years."

This University is member of IARU(International Alliance of Research Universities. The members are The Australian National University (ANU),National University of Singapore(NUS),Peking University, ETH Zurich, University of California, Berkeley, University of Cambridge, University of Copenhagen, University of Oxford, The University of Tokyo and Yale University.

Thomson Scientific, a division of Thomson Corporation, have announced the top 20 ranking of Japanese research institutions for all fields based on citation data of academic papers published from January 1997 to December 2007. This includes the Top 10 ranking for each of the four fields in which Japan’s contribution is particularly noteworthy. Tokyo University tops the list among Japanese institutions after comprehensive review of 22 fields of sciences being considered into evaluation process.

Three JNU students currently are pursueing their Ph.D. from The University of Tokyo. Mr. Manish Kumar Singh, Mr. Punkaj Kumar, Mr. Ram Avatar are all students of SES over the years in successive batches. Mr. Ram said difference between what we research in India and what in Japan lies in the perception; where in India we lay more emphasis on results rather than on the failures and small steps being taken in the process of research have to be justified in Japanese Universities. One of the striking disparities ramain the key infrastructure and funding patterns. Also, as mentioned in one of my previous blog postings, with the dwindling population of Japan, Ministry of Science & Technology, (MEXT) is trying to attract more tallent to study fundamental sciences.(http://www.mext.go.jp/english/kaihatu/index.htm)

Few days before I met Dr. Babasaheb Sankpal on the sidelines of Nobel Laurete Conclave in Allahabad. He is Associate Proffessor of Physics in North Maharashtra University. He was also in Japan for nearly three years for Post Doctoral studies in Material Sciences. He was sharing with me his concern that he could not get the desired machines for his lab for more than six months due to administrative delays in UGC, let alone the pressing urgency of Ph. D. students who really deserve JRFs. With the kind of scholarships foreign universities are giving to attract the students from India, it is certainly alaraming situation for S&T System in India. It is agreed that UGC and CSIR have increased in recent months the JRFs and SRFs but compared to kind of committment and sacrifise one student makes to come to do reasearch, they are not and not at all rewarded well. The reward system remains at the helm of debate when India is witnesing passionate debate about recently introduded Bill in Parliament i.e. 'Utillisation and Commercialisation of Public Funded Research'.