With a history of over 130 years, Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) is one of Japan’s top national universities in the field of Science and Technology. Tokyo Tech has 23 departments, 6 graduate schools with 45 departments, and many research institutes across its Ookayama, Suzukakedai and Tamachi campuses.
Founded by the Japanese government as the Tokyo Vocational School on May 26, 1881, Tokyo Tech aimed at new modernized craftsmen and engineers in order to catch up with the countries from the West. In 1890, the Tokyo Vocational School was renamed as the Tokyo Technical School, and 11 years later, it was once again renamed as Tokyo Higher Technical School. In 1923 much of the school’s Kuramae campus was destroyed by the Great Kanto Earthquake, and a year later, the school moved to its present site in Ookayama. In 1929, the school became a degree conferring university, the Tokyo Institute of Technology.
After the Second World War, the school reorganized in order to cope with the new educational system in Japan. Most of the school’s three courses were turned into four year courses. In 1953, graduate programs in Engineering were introduced, and in 1954, five research labs were integrated and reorganized into four laboratories. Throughout the 50s, the high economic growth era of the 60s, up to the present, Tokyo Tech has been successful in providing the country with high caliber engineers, researchers, businessmen and notable personalities.
Currently, Tokyo Tech offers undergraduate schools namely, School of Science, School of Engineering, and the School of Bioscience and Biotechnology. Moreover, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Graduate School of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Interdisciplinary Graduate School of Science and engineering, Graduate School of Information Science and Engineering, Graduate School of Decision Science and Technology, and the Graduate School of Innovation Management are being offered at the school’s Graduate School program.
Today, the school continues its journey to become the major center for supercomputing technology and robotics. Among the notable projects that this institute has accomplished in the past, includes the Articulated Body Mobile Robot known as the “Koryu-II” (KR-II) robot, and the KR-I robot, the lightweight quadruped robot called the Titan XIII which is a four legged robot capable of traversing rough terrain and difficult landscapes, and also the “Gyotaro-IIIa educational robot which is designed to explain the basic principle of the locomotion of a fish and snake.
