Reducing the cost of rocket launches has become an urgent challenge as countries around the world, including Japan, invest heavily in the space industry and competition in space development continues to intensify. Achieving this requires making rockets lighter, and in recent years, a lightweight, resilient composite material known as carbon fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP) has come to be used in various parts of rockets. However, developing CFRP fuel tanks--which account for a large portion of a rocket's structure--remains an ongoing challenge. This is because CFRP tanks exposed to cryogenic environments can develop cracks. Toru Kamita, a visiting professor at #UTokyo_IIS is working to solve this issue in order to enable the development of CFRP fuel tanks. This research has the potential to transform not only space development but also the future of aircraft and automobiles.

Living organisms contain a large amount of water. Around 60% of our bodies, 70 to 90% of plants, and about 80% of water-dwelling animals like fish are actually made of water. But we don't really know enough about exactly where that water is--down to the level of specific tissues and cells --how much there is, or what form it takes inside the body.Professor Ryo Shirakashi of #UTokyo_IIS is conducting research to elucidate the states of water within biological systems, based on the principles of thermal science and engineering. What insights can be gained by studying water within biological systems? We asked him to explain in detail.

At #UTokyo_IIS , all professors, associate professors and lecturers independently lead their own laboratories. When Yoshiho Ikeuchi joined #UTokyo_IIS as a lecturer in 2014, he sat alone in his newly established lab and was carefully mapping out his future research plans. One day, he received a visit from Jiro Kawada, a postdoctoral researcher at #UTokyo_IIS who aspired to develop medication for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Together, they launched a research project that merged neuroscience and engineering, which eventually lead to the biotech startup Jiksak Bioengineering.Eight years have passed since the company's founding. The young CEO Jiro Kawada is devoted wholeheartedly to drug discovery, and Professor Yoshiho Ikeuchi works alongside him as a technical advisor while also continuing his academic research. Their conversation hinted at a wide range of career possibilities, not only for PhD holders but also for those with master's and bachelor's degrees.

In Japan, incidents of damage caused by encounters between bears and humans surged across the country in 2025, with the appearance of bears in urban areas becoming a serious issue in northern Tohoku, especially in Akita and Iwate. Why is the risk of encounters currently on the rise? And where is danger likely to grow in the future? This article introduces research by Professor Wataru Takeuchi of #UTokyo_IIS, which integrates remote sensing and machine learning to show the probability of bear appearances and how the risks may change moving forward.

On Tuesday, November 25, the Institute of Industrial Science (IIS), the University of Tokyo, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Department of Industrial Design at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), South Korea. The signing ceremony was conducted virtually.

In recent years, a great deal of research has been conducted on creating organ models known as organoids. Organoids are produced by differentiating stem cells or iPS cells into the cells of a target organ while culturing them in three dimensions, thereby partially replicating cell-to-cell interactions and certain functions of the organ. Brain-mimicking organoids have also been developed and are drawing attention as a new approach to neuroscience research. At #UTokyo_IIS, Professor Yoshiho Ikeuchi is taking an inventive approach to brain organoid research, employing unique methods to uncover the secrets behind the intricate workings of the human brain.

Understanding the mechanisms behind massive earthquakes to predict their magnitude and frequency requires conducting frequent measurements of seafloor movements with centimeter-level precision. However, with the currently available method, such observations call for traveling by ship to the target location, collecting data, and then returning--making it difficult to conduct measurements with sufficient frequency. Under these circumstances, Associate Professor Yusuke Yokota of #UTokyo_IIS throughout joint research with HAMA, Inc., has succeeded for the first time in the world in measuring the position of the seabed with centimeter-level precision using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that lands on the sea surface. This breakthrough technology is attracting attention for enabling more frequent and cost-effective measurements of seabed positions.

Researchers led by Associate Professor Hideki Kikumoto at #UTokyo_IIS fuse regional climate datasets and local weather observations to find a significant rise in urban temperatures and heatwaves in Tokyo.

The Nankai Trough seafloor cable seismic observation network DONET is used for earthquake early warning and tsunami prediction. A thermometer is attached to each of these ocean bottom seismometers to measure the temperature near the seafloor. In this study, by investigating long-term ocean bottom temperature data, a research group of Yusuke Yokota (Associate Professor at #UTokyo_IIS), Tomohiro Inoue and Tatsuya Kubota (National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience) detected for the first time ocean waves fluctuating synchronously over an area of more than 100 km along the Nankai Trough. In oceanography, this may be a "Coastal Trapped Wave (CTW)" , and this is a rare observation case that shows the possibility of new oceanographic observations using the ocean bottom seismic observation network. The temperature change is very small, a phenomenon that cannot be detected by ocean bottom pressure gauges, and the signal is of a size that does not affect earthquake observations or slow slip observations in the Nankai Trough. In the future, if more accurate slow slip detection is implemented, it may become noise.