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In March 2022, National University Corporation Tokai National Higher Education and Research System, Nagoya University (President: MATSUO Seiichi) provided approximately 530,000 Japanese-English translation sentences consisting of university regulations, notifications, and correspondences, to the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (President: TOKUDA Hideyuki; hereinafter “NICT”), a National Research and Development Agency. The data will be used to help improve the accuracy of machine translation engines developed under the “Hon’yaku (Translation) Bank” scheme run by NICT and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

NICT and nine other members today extended and expanded the underlying Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the Asia-Pacific-Europe Ring (AER) in a virtual signing ceremony at the APAN53 conference held in Bangladesh, after three years of successful collaboration.

TOKYO—Nomura Holdings, Inc. (President and Group CEO, Kentaro Okuda, hereinafter Nomura HD), Nomura Securities Co., Ltd. (Representative Director and President, Kentaro Okuda, hereinafter Nomura Securities), National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (President, Hideyuki Tokuda, Ph.D., hereinafter NICT), Toshiba Corporation (Representative Executive Officer and President and Chief Executive Officer, Satoshi Tsunakawa, hereinafter Toshiba), and NEC Corporation (President and CEO, Takayuki Morita, hereinafter NEC) have jointly verified the effectiveness and practicality of quantum cryptography for future social implementation using stock trading operations as a use case, where high-speed, large-volume, low-latency data transmission is strictly required.

National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) is conducting research and development on Beyond 5G, a future communication system that aims to be realized after 2030. For the realization of Beyond 5G, it is necessary to deepen discussions by incorporating opinions from various fields and age groups. Therefore, referring to the future social image shown in the NICT Beyond 5G/6G White Paper published in March 2021, we’re holding an event to frankly exchange opinions with people of various fields and ages and deepen discussions. We hope that this event helps people to increase interests in Beyond 5G, and also helps to create new collaborations, new ideas, and new services. We look forward to your participation.

RaNNC (Rapid Neural Network Connector), automatic parallelization middleware for deep learning developed jointly by Data-driven Intelligent System Research Center (DIRECT), the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT, President: TOKUDA Hideyuki, Ph.D.), and the University of Tokyo (President: FUJII Teruo), won first place at the PyTorch Annual Hackathon 2021 (PyTorch Developer Tools & Libraries category).

Clarivate Analytics unveiled a list of "Highly Cited Researchers 2021" in London on November 16, 2021, and one researcher was selected from NICT.

Quantum Innovation 2021 (The International Symposium on Quantum Science, Technology and Innovation) will be held as a virtual conference from Tuesday, December 7th, through Thursday, December 9th.
The aim of this symposium is to introduce quantum information processing technology and its trends in practical applications through guest speeches and technical sessions of each field. We expect to share a common view on the current study status including implementation results both in Japan and abroad as well as to promote international collaborations through the meetings with key persons from each country. We look forward to your participation.

NICT proudly announces that Professor Dr. Andreas Dengel*, Executive Director of German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), awarded "the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon" of Japan in the autumn of 2021.

A study group consisting of the University of Electro-Communications (UEC), National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Meiji University, National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR), and Kyushu University has devised a method to observe noctilucent clouds (NLCs) appearing at 80-85 km altitude by focusing on the rim of the Earth captured in the disk images from the geostationary meteorological satellite Himawari 8. The group has established a real-time NLCs monitoring system using the satellite data. With the new monitoring method of NLCs or “Climate Canary”, contributions to studies related to climate changes including global warming are expected.

NICT's research paper on nitride superconducting qubit, published on Monday, September 20, 2021, was selected as a featured image highlight at <i>Communications Materials</i> (an open-access journal from Nature Research), so an optical micrograph image of a nitride superconducting qubit circuit is displayed as the main screen view of the journal.

Toshiba Corporation, Tohoku University Tohoku Medical Megabank Organization (ToMMo), Tohoku University Hospital, and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) have developed a distributed storage technology that combines quantum cryptography communication and secret sharing technologies, successfully demonstrating the world’s first experimental large-scale genome analysis data backup to multiple sites. These technologies will allow data backup that prevents data leaks and tampering over long periods and are expected to contribute to safe data management in the fields of genomic research and medicine.

Researchers at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT, President: TOKUDA Hideyuki, Ph.D.), in collaboration with researchers at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST, President: Dr. ISHIMURA Kazuhiko) and the Tokai National Higher Education and Research System Nagoya University (President: Dr. MATSUO Seiichi) have succeeded in developing an all-nitride superconducting qubit using epitaxial growth on a silicon substrate that does not use aluminum as the conductive material. This qubit uses niobium nitride (NbN) with a superconducting transition temperature of 16 K (-257 °C) as the electrode material, and aluminum nitride (AlN) for the insulating layer of the Josephson junction. It is a new type of qubit made of all-nitride materials grown epitaxially on a silicon substrate and free of any amorphous oxides, which are a major noise source. By realizing this new material qubit on a silicon substrate, long coherence times have been obtained: an energy relaxation time (T₁) of 16 microseconds and a phase relaxation time (T₂) of 22 microseconds as the mean values. This is about 32 times T₁ and about 44 times T₂ of nitride superconducting qubits grown on a conventional magnesium oxide substrate.

The National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience (NIED; Haruo HAYASHI, President), the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT; Hideyuki TOKUDA, President), Japan Weather Association (JWA; Ken HARUTA, Chairman), Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Co., Ltd. (Shinichi HIROSE, President), Tokio Marine dR Co., Ltd. (Taizo SHIMAKURA, President & CEO), and Mitsubishi Estate Co., Ltd.(Junichi YOSHIDA, President & CEO) will conduct a proof-of-concept experiment to provide responsive weather forecasts with a 30-min lead time for event managers and attendees during the Marunouchi Street Park 2021 Summer event held from August 2nd to September 12th.

The group lead by Executive Researcher, YOSHIHARA Motojiro, and Senior Researcher, SAKURAI Akira, at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Kobe (NICT, President: TOKUDA Hideyuki, Ph.D.) unraveled a neural correlate of Pavlovian conditioning. The feeding command neuron, which was discovered by the same group in the brain of fruit flies (Nature, 2013)1, was found to be hijacked by an originally-independent stimulus, leading to the conditioned response. Furthermore, the experimental system of Pavlovian conditioning made possible real-time observation of cell-cell connection for memory formation.
These results were published in Current Biology at 11 AM on August 4 (US Eastern Standard Time) in 2021.