Team-type research to produce excellent achievements leading to scientific and technological innovation

Overview

The purpose of CREST is promoting unique, internationally high-level basic research to address the important problems facing our country and to produce creative, conspicuous, and innovative technology seeds (new technology seeds) based on new scientific knowledge that contributes to scientific and technological innovation that can transform the society and economy. Under the management principles of the Research Area specified by the Research Supervisor, the best teams led by top-level researchers in our country selected by the Research Supervisor train the young researchers in a team while advancing the progress of research.

Outline

Research Period

5 years and 6 months or less

Research Budget

Total of 150-500 million yen / team

Characteristics

• To achieve Strategic Objectives, a Research Supervisor can flexibly design a Research Area at his/her discretion including specifying the number of the research projects in the Research Area and the size of the budget for each research project and introducing the stage gates during the period of a research as well as some reorganization of a team.
• Research Supervisors call for research proposals based on the Research Areas they manage, adopting 10 to 20 research projects in each area. Research Supervisors consider the field of science and technologies and the balance between the science and scientific and technological innovation, which constitute the portfolio of the whole Research Area. For this purpose, we call for proposals several times separately and criteria for accepting proposals are clarified each time in the application requirements. When calling for research proposals, the requirements may include the participation of researchers from industry and/or the fields of culture and social science to advance basic research with a specific goal. Furthermore, the requirements may include the organization of teams from different academic fields for more challenging research projects.
• We will adopt the best teams and Research Directors to maintain a high level of research internationally. In order for top-level researchers to produce results by collaborating with other researchers, we support each research project using a fund typically worth several hundred million yen.
• In order to maximize achievements, our Research Supervisors adopt a flexible management approach by giving instructions on changing, accelerating, or cancelling research projects depending on their progress. We assign about ten Research Area Advisors to support Research Areas by giving advice and performing evaluations in terms of science and technology. In addition, we have experts who can give advice from a legal point of view such as lawyers and experts from industry when needed.
• In each research project, the development of post-doctoral researchers and students in the team is also an important mission as well as the realization of proposals.

Research Framework