International collaborations
In research and education, an international environment is essential for fostering students who can make large contributions to a global society in the 21st century. To achieve this, TTI has combined efforts with a sister school in Chicago, has formed academic relationships with universities outside of Japan, and has accepted many foreign students and post-doctoral fellows. In the past, 148 researchers from 38 different countries across the world have joined TTI.
Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago (TTIC)
TTIC, a sister institute of TTI, officially opened for operation in September 2003 as a philanthropically endowed academic institute. TTIC is dedicated to basic research and graduate education in computer science.
Close collaborations between TTIC and TTI are now occurring in two areas: research and education. An extensive set of joint research is under way between TTIC and TTI faculty members. Joint research topics include machine learning-based algorithms for road object recognition, which are applied to autonomous vehicles.
In an educational aspect, TTIC has hosted graduate students from TTI for about three months to allow them to attend regular course lectures by TTIC and the University of Chicago during the fall quarter. TTIC faculty members also teach a TTI graduate course, "Introduction to Machine Learning," remotely by using a video-conferencing system. The style and contents of this course lecture have improved every year in various ways to better match TTI students.
In addition to research and educational collaborations, TTI and TTIC hold jointly a half-day computer science seminar at TTI every year. The audience has reached nearly 100 participants, and it has consisted of researchers and engineers from TTI, Toyota Motor Corporation, Toyota R&D Research Center, and relevant corporations and universities.
