Osaka University’s greatest strength lies in its capability as a comprehensive research university to foster highly skilled human resources taking advantage of the outstanding research being conducted in a wide range of fields. Further enhancing our research capability requires us to bring together the research expertise of researchers in various fields and open new academic frontiers. Meanwhile, implementing innovation inevitably involves efforts to promote research while considering promising solutions to social issues in order to create new, socially significant values.

　Amid growing demand for mutual collaboration among increasingly diversified academic fields, in January 2017 Osaka University established the Institute for Open and Transdisciplinary Research Initiatives (OTRI) as an organization that will serve as an incubator of new academic frontiers and breakthrough innovations by further promoting open and transdisciplinary research through cooperation across organizational, social, national and other borders.

　Aiming to address social issues through academic research based on researchers’ intellectual curiosity and original ideas, the OTRI will capitalize on Osaka University’s strengths to take up the challenge of developing new academic frontiers by bringing together and integrating expertise from various specialized fields, and implementing breakthrough innovations through a process of cooperative creation with society across organizational borders. Furthermore, the OTRI will also strive to achieve “a society where each member leads a meaningful and fulfilling life” by incorporating wisdom from around the world and collaborating with a wide range of experts in society, and contribute to solutions to global issues by identifying and fostering world-leading research fields, and promoting activities for turning the OTRI itself into a global research hub and a base for breakthrough innovations.