Advanced Industrial Science and Technology

The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (産業技術総合研究所, Sangyō Gijutsu Sōgō Kenkyū-jo), or AIST, is a Japanese research facility headquartered in Tokyo, and most of the workforce is located in Tsukuba Science City, Ibaraki, and in several cities throughout Japan. The institute is managed to integrate scientific and engineering knowledge to address socio-economic needs. It became a newly designed legal body of independent administrative institution in 2001, remaining under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. The institute attempts to use and integrate scientific and engineering knowledge that is fragmented into various disciplines to address versatile and highly complex socio-economic needs that change rapidly with time. AIST defines such research as Type-II Basic Research, which integrates multiple disciplines and creates methods for the use of integrated knowledge; traditional basic research is defined as Type-I Basic Research, which is the pursuit and discovery of novel rules, laws and principles that govern natural phenomena.

Website
http://www.aist.go.jp/
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