Tohoku University and National Taiwan University (NTU) have selected five joint research projects for support under the 2026 Joint Seed Fund Program.
This seed fund was established based on a mutual agreement between the two universities to promote and encourage collaborative research. In this inaugural call for proposals, a total of 20 applications were submitted, and following a joint review conducted by both institutions, the five interdisciplinary projects listed below were selected for funding.
The selected projects will receive research grants to support their activities for up to one year, beginning in April 2026.
| Research Areas | NTU Lead | Tohoku University Lead | Project |
| Neuroscience/Psychology | Prof. Wen-Sung Lai
(College of Science) |
Prof. Kenichiro TSUTSUI
(Graduate School of Life Sciences) |
Neural Mechanisms of Cortico-Amygdala Circuits in Emotional Regulation and Psychiatric Disorders |
| AI in Healthcare | Assoc. Prof. Furen Xiao(College of Medicine) |
Prof. Noriyasu HOMMA
(School of Medicine) |
AI-Driven Integration of Brain Tumor MRI and Pathology Reports for Feasibility Assessment of Non-Invasive Pathological Characterization |
| Agricultural Chemistry, Food Chemistry, Analytical Chemistry, Metabolomics, Computational Science | Assoc. Prof. Hong-Jhang Chen(College of Bioresources and Agriculture) |
Assistant Prof. Hiroyuki HATTORI (Graduate School of Agricultural Science) |
Establishing a High-throughput Screening Platform for Bioactive Materials Using Untargeted Metabolomics and Molecular Networking: A Japan–Taiwan Collaborative Study on Indigenous Foods for Sustainable Functional Agriculture |
| Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Robot/AI Ethics, Social Robotics | Prof. Hsiu-Ping Yueh
(Research Center for Digital Humanities) |
Prof. Yasuhisa HIRATA
(Graduate School of Engineering) |
Toward Ethically Aligned AI Robot Design for Responsible Human-Robot Interaction: A Cross-Cultural Interdisciplinary Collaboration |
| Silicon carbide (SiC), Quantum technology, Color center/Spin defect | Prof. Kung-Yen Lee
(Department of Engineering Science and Ocean Engineering) |
Prof. Makoto KODA
(Graduate School of Engineering) |
Defect engineering toward Silicon Carbide quantum devices |
Contact:
Global Strategy Office
Tel: +81 22 217 6311
Email：kokusai-c*grp.tohoku.ac.jp (replace * with @)