Welcome to Transdisciplinary Federation of Science and Technology (TraFST)

 President Message

Hiroe Tsubski

  I have been elected as the seventh president of Transdisciplinary Federation Science and Technology (TRAFST), succeeding Prof. Yoshifumi Yasuoka, the former president. In addition to carrying on the achievements of past presidents, I will re-evaluate the high ideals set forth at the time of the establishment of TRAFST, such as the integration of knowledge to solve social issues and the development of human resources for this purpose, and I will strive to develop TRAFST through the implementation of these ideals.
  Historically, the continued development of society and industry has been normally supported by the necessary fusion of academic and field knowledge and I believe that strategic planning experts who could connect these two knowledges have been active in industry, in government, or even in academic engineering research projects.
  One of the goals of TRAFST is to systematize the fusion of knowledge and the production of the human resources necessary for this fusion. I believe that the creation of a process to "integrate knowledge" by going one step further into fusion and synthesis of knowledge and applying it to society is the "Koto-Making" that was proposed at the time of the establishment of TRAFST in 2003.
  The integration of knowledge and its implementation that we should aim for is to make the near-future society a better place for human beings and the environment in which they live, and to build a society and environment that takes care to ensure that no one is left behind.
  Semantic knowledge centered on the social sciences, humanities, and management sciences is essential to clarify the implementation process in which stakeholders with opposing interests identify the ideal society and formulate a consensus solution. To clarify the scientific methodology required for effective implementation, use knowledge such as measurement, robotics, and optimization is necessary. To express that effectiveness as a model requires knowledge of informatics, simulation, and the science of data, which is also the foundation of artificial intelligence. This kind of knowledge has been called transdisciplinary knowledge by TRAFST.
  However, I believe that the knowledge of the systems that make up society and industry is mainly found in what could be called “vertical knowledges”, and that much of the knowledge that resides in industry and other fields exists as vertical knowledge in the software used by experts and specialists. I would like to call this knowledge of specialists "deep vertical knowledge” and the too-deep knowledge may be called tacit knowledge.
  An internal issue in the 20 years since the inception of TRAFST with its membership of academic societies has been the lack of visibility of the results of TRAFST’s activities to the individual members of the member societies. It is a matter of concern that the activities of TRAFST have not directly affected the members of the member societies, which should be remedied through stronger cooperation with the member societies.
  However, what is more important for TRAFST is the formation of a project to promote the integration of deep vertical knowledge and deep transdisciplinary knowledge. This is because transdisciplinary knowledge cannot live in a vacuum but evolves and develops through activities with deep vertical knowledge.
  As artificial intelligence is rapidly changing human society, institutions of higher education shall aim to develop human resources who can look at different fields, clarify what should be done and how, and integrate the knowledge of a group of experts. The experts who have mastered these skills will be the ones in charge of pseudo-human resource development, educating people on what to do with artificial intelligence.
  We are planning to solve these issues in TRAFST, and we would be grateful for the support and cooperation of so many people.

 Contact

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