P&I Lab. Kawashima G., Tokyo Institute of Technology
Founded as the Research Laboratory of Precision Machinery and Electronics, the P & I, as abbreviated, was established back in 1954. The P&I Lab in the Tokyo Institute of Technology was a pre-existing organization even before it was duly established.
The lab was founded with the aim of being an establishment of precision engineering technology and its application. It later advanced to widen the target of its mission, having the combination of various disciplines like information, electronics, mechanics, mechatronics and materials, and to head interdisciplinary research.
Since the P&I Laboratory was established, the lab has embraced new research areas and essential technologies and methods that are able to make important contributions in today’s society.
Among the many projects that were developed at this laboratory were those of Professor Isaac Koga’s temperature-independent quart crystal oscillator, Professor Takashi Nakada’s gear drive engineering and numerical control technology or NC, and Professor Ken-Ichi Iga’s vertical cavity semiconductor lasers. These projects were the results of the lab’s massive and intensive research.
In 1993, the laboratory changed its structure and had five divisions: the Advance Information Processing Division, Advanced Microdevices Division, the Precision Machine Devices Division, the Advanced Mechanical Systems Division, and lastly the Advanced Materials Division.
Today, the lab is faced with the challenge of social demands to raise the bar of their research, research that could contribute to the world’s sustainability using a more secure technology. And with the success of their current and previous projects, and the help of the policy being imposed by the university which integrates several research labs under the supervision of the Integrated Research Institute, the P&I Laboratory of the Tokyo Institute of Technology will surely go places not only locally, but globally.
