Sony, Keio Univ to develop innovative engineers

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Sony Corp and Keio University, one of Japan’s most prestigious private universities, will launch a joint project in 2009 to foster the university’s masters and Ph.D courses to produce innovative engineers as well as conduct joint technology developments which are applicable for commercial purposes, the two companies said on Tuesday.

The joint project, which targets students in the science and engineering fields, will include lectures by Sony specialists at Keio University, acceptance of student interns at Sony as well as a personnel exchange between Sony engineers and Keio professors. Sony will also provide 150 PlayStation 3 game devices for the development of Cell/BE application programs by making use of the devices’ CPUs.

“What we aim to do together with Keio University is develop more innovative engineers who can create new areas of technology,” said Ryoji Chubachi, Sony president and CEO. He said the project is a mutual one for human resource development unlike conventional industrial-academia collaborations which have traditionally been one-sided.

Asked about a report by a weekly magazine that Sony is suffering an engineer brain drain, Chubachi said, “With limited resources, we have to carefully choose areas (of business) to concentrate on, in order to meet our stakeholders’ expectations.”

Meanwhile, Keio President Yuichiro Anzai said, “In Japan, the majority of masters students in engineering and technology find (full-time) jobs after their graduation. Ph.D students, however, have fewer job opportunities because universities have been focusing exclusively on academic research activities. They are not seen as adaptable or having fighting potential (in technology development applicable for business). This is a grave situation for a technological country like Japan.”

He added that Keio, whose faculty of science and technology has 1,457 masters students and 336 Ph.D students, including international students, aims to foster what they call “global personnel” through the joint project and its special engineering courses taught in English.