University, firms to tie up on bio-IT in Japan

From...

By Kuriko Miyake

(IDG) -- Osaka University will form an alliance with 16 Japanese companies for future joint developments in bio-IT, the university said Friday.

The 16 companies include Sony Corp. of Tokyo; Omron Corp., Rohm Co. Ltd. and Shimadzu Corp., all of Kyoto; and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., Sharp Corp., Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) West Corp., Kansai Electric Power Co. and Takeda Chemical Industries Ltd., all of Osaka.

The initial purpose of this tie-up is to exchange information between Osaka University's bio-informatics department and the 16 companies, according to Makoto Imase, professor of Osaka University.

The university and companies will organize a forum on May 1, and plan to have their first meeting at the beginning of July, Imase said. Until then, nothing has been decided, he said.

"Several of the companies have already been working on research and development with some of our laboratories," Imase said. "However, such an alliance is usually done with one university laboratory on one company basis, so we are hoping that the forum will eventually lead to joint developments on large-scale projects, which involve several companies and several university laboratories," he said.