Greetings from the President of F-REI

2025 New Year message from F-REI President Koetsu Yamazaki

Happy New Year! I sincerely hope the New Year finds you in good health, and that 2025 will be a fruitful year for everyone.

F-REI, established in Namie Town, Fukushima Prefecture in April 2023, will soon enter its third year. Over the past two years, it has conducted a range of activities for the post-disaster reconstruction of Fukushima and the wider Tohoku region. These activities address local and community issues and aspire to broaden the possibilities of a post-reconstruction future.

One of F-REI's primary functions is R&D. Currently in progress are over 50 commissioned research projects in five research fields, one of which is robotics. In robotics, F-REI in October 2024 hosted the World Robot Summit Harsh Environment F-REI Challenge Pre-tournament event.⁰¹ The event took place in Fukushima Prefecture and included four competitions for robots and drones designed to perform under the kind of challenging conditions posed by major disasters. Participating teams competed by showcasing technological innovations capable of opening up new possibilities for disaster response. We are working with relevant organizations and local communities to prepare for the World Robot Summit 2025 Harsh Environment F-REI Challenge Tournament,⁰² scheduled for October 2025, which we hope will be another success.

In 2024, we appointed seven new Unit Leaders, which brings the number of F-REI's in-house research units to eight. Going forward, we are looking to appoint new Unit Leaders on an ongoing basis, further enhance expertise, promote cross-disciplinary collaboration, and conduct in-house R&D in a planned manner.

The roundtables we hold with municipalities play a vital role in driving more wide-ranging collaborations with ever more diverse stakeholders. F-REI has hosted roundtables in Nakadori and in Aizu, among other locations. In Hamadori, it held roundtables respectively focusing on different research fields and themes. Another major function of F-REI is the industrial application of R&D results. To this end F-REI has actively pursued partnerships with local businesses, and has worked to strengthen industry-government-academia partnerships by, for instance, concluding MOUs for collaboration and cooperation with institutions in Japan and abroad. Through these activities, F-REI seeks to return the fruits of research to the community and to revitalize the economy of Fukushima as a whole.

For human resource development, another major function of F-REI, we have hosted Top Seminars delivered by F-REI senior officials and have conducted school visits, aiming to communicate the marvels of science and the appeal of a rewarding career in research and to hopefully encourage future F-REI researchers. By offering science and technology experiences to local elementary and middle-school students, F-REI contributes also to the capacity-building of young people tasked with shaping the future of their communities. F-REI is working tirelessly to develop its own organizational capacity for nurturing future researchers and technicians.

In 2025, we are at long last expecting to see preparations for the construction of our main facilities begin in earnest. We will not just be creating an R&D environment attractive enough to draw excellent researchers and businesses from across the world, but will also be making our premises an established, well-loved part of the local community, so that we can participate in community-building efforts.

In April 2025, F-REI is expected to incorporate the Fukushima Robot Test Field (RTF) and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency Collaborative Laboratories for Advanced Decommissioning Science (JAEA CLADS) as well as part of the National Institute for Environmental Studies Fukushima Regional Collaborative Research Center (NIES FRECC). It is hoped these moves will further propel research in the respective fields pursued by these organizations and improve overall coordination.

In May, F-REI will be exhibiting at Expo 2025 Osaka. In the pipeline is immersive content for "experiencing" the future envisaged by F-REI's research. An event to look forward to in October is of course the WRS 2025 Harsh Environment F-REI Challenge Tournament, where we will watch cutting-edge robotic technologies and innovative solutions battle it out.

Through its many and varied approaches, F-REI hopes to steadily build positive outcomes and contribute to the post-disaster reconstruction of Fukushima and the wider Tohoku region. We will be redoubling our efforts to this end in 2025, and look forward to your ongoing support and cooperation.

I wish to conclude my New Year's message by once again wishing you the best of health and happiness, and by asking for your continued support.

January 9, 2025
Koetsu Yamazaki
President, Fukushima Institute for Research, Education and Innovation