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Tokyo, March 15, 2024 – A Japanese consortium of joint research partners including RIKEN, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Osaka University, Fujitsu Limited, and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) have been recognized with the prestigious Prime Minister's Award as part of the 53rd Japan Industrial Technology Awards for the successful development of a high-performance computing platform that leverages Japan's second domestically-made superconducting quantum computer.

Tokyo and Osaka, December 20, 2023 – A consortium of joint research partners including the Center for Quantum Information and Quantum Biology at Osaka University, RIKEN, the Advanced Semiconductor Research Center at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), the Superconducting ICT Laboratory at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Amazon Web Services, e-trees.Japan, Inc., Fujitsu Limited, NTT Corporation (NTT), QuEL, Inc., QunaSys Inc., and Systems Engineering Consultants Co.,LTD. (SEC) today announced the successful development of Japan’s third superconducting quantum computer (1) installed at Osaka University. Starting December 22, 2023, the partners will provide users in Japan access to the newly developed computer via the cloud, enabling researchers to execute quantum algorithms (2), improve and verify the operation of software, and explore use cases remotely.

Tokyo, March 24, 2023 - A consortium of joint research partners including RIKEN, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Osaka University, Fujitsu Limited (Fujitsu) and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) announced the successful development of Japan’s first superconducting(1) quantum computer(2). Starting March 27, 2023, the partners will provide the newly developed technology to users in Japan as a cloud service for non-incommercial use under a joint research agreement with RIKEN.

Tokyo, March 24, 2023 - A consortium of joint research partners including RIKEN, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Osaka University, Fujitsu Limited (Fujitsu) and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) announced the successful development of Japan’s first superconducting(1) quantum computer(2). Starting March 27, 2023, the partners will provide the newly developed technology to users in Japan as a cloud service for non-incommercial use under a joint research agreement with RIKEN.

Dr. Masataka Higashiwaki (Director of Green ICT Device Laboratory, Koganei Frontier Research Center, Advanced ICT Research Institute) was elevated to be a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in class of 2023, which is the highest grade of membership. His citation is “for contributions to gallium oxide electronics and millimeter-wave gallium nitride transistors”.

NICT has hosted the ASEAN IVO Forum 2022 in Thailand, which has been jointly sponsored by the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (NECTEC), and Chulalongkorn University, was held at said university, with approximately 140 participants, including online participants. ASEAN IVO is a virtual organisation of ASEAN universities and research institutes formed with NICT in February 2015 with the goal of promoting ICT based solutions to the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. The Forum, which is a place to share ideas for solutions to shared societal issues in the ASEAN region and report the results of joint projects, is hosted in an ASEAN country every year with the aim of promoting ICT research and development in the region.

In March 2022, National University Corporation Tokai National Higher Education and Research System, Nagoya University (President: MATSUO Seiichi) provided approximately 530,000 Japanese-English translation sentences consisting of university regulations, notifications, and correspondences, to the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (President: TOKUDA Hideyuki; hereinafter “NICT”), a National Research and Development Agency. The data will be used to help improve the accuracy of machine translation engines developed under the “Hon’yaku (Translation) Bank” scheme run by NICT and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

NICT and nine other members today extended and expanded the underlying Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the Asia-Pacific-Europe Ring (AER) in a virtual signing ceremony at the APAN53 conference held in Bangladesh, after three years of successful collaboration.

Clarivate Analytics unveiled a list of "Highly Cited Researchers 2021" in London on November 16, 2021, and one researcher was selected from NICT.

NICT proudly announces that Professor Dr. Andreas Dengel*, Executive Director of German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), awarded "the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon" of Japan in the autumn of 2021.

A study group consisting of the University of Electro-Communications (UEC), National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Meiji University, National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR), and Kyushu University has devised a method to observe noctilucent clouds (NLCs) appearing at 80-85 km altitude by focusing on the rim of the Earth captured in the disk images from the geostationary meteorological satellite Himawari 8. The group has established a real-time NLCs monitoring system using the satellite data. With the new monitoring method of NLCs or “Climate Canary”, contributions to studies related to climate changes including global warming are expected.

NICT's research paper on nitride superconducting qubit, published on Monday, September 20, 2021, was selected as a featured image highlight at <i>Communications Materials</i> (an open-access journal from Nature Research), so an optical micrograph image of a nitride superconducting qubit circuit is displayed as the main screen view of the journal.

An international team of researchers from Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Boston University, University of Leicester, Space Research Corporation, and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), led by Dr. James O’Donoghue, found that Jupiter’s intense aurora, the most powerful in the solar system, is responsible for heating the entire planet’s upper atmosphere to surprisingly high temperatures.

NICT, along with ten other global leading-edge research and education networks in North America, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania, signed a memorandum of understanding to join the Asia Pacific Oceania network (APOnet) and collaboratively improve high-speed network services in the Asia Pacific Oceania region.