GMD Activities in Japan

The liaison office in Japan has been in operation since 1977. It is located in the German Cultural Center in Tokyo, see map. The main goals of its five bilingual Japanese and German staff members are to make the results of Japanese research available to Europe and to put concepts for cooperation projects with Japan to the test. Only with a strong local presence can GMD build working relations with public authorities, research institutions, universities, and industries.

GMD researchers from Germany can use the opportunity presented by the liaison office to familiarize themselves with the research environment in Japan.

Japanese scientific literature is in high demand in Germany. Each year, the Tokyo staff processes roughly two thousand requests from German libraries for magazine articles, conference proceedings, and reports in all areas of science; about nine hundred of these requests are standing orders for periodical material.

The Tokyo staff represents GMD research groups in joint research projects with Japanese partners, such as in the Real World Computing Partnership, RWC, of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. The aim of this ten-year project is to explore the technological foundations of information technology in the twenty-first century, when systems will be based on critical new technologies such as highly parallel optical processors and neural nets. In October 1992, GMD was accepted as its first member from outside Japan.

GMD Tokyo also organized the negotiations with NEC, the leading Japanese Computer and Communications company, to establish NEC's first European research laboratory in GMD's TechnoPark in 1994.

German National Research Center for Computer Science (GMD)
GMD Bureau Tokyo
German Cultural Center
Akasaka 7-5-56
Minato-ku
Tokyo 107
Japan
Telephone: +81 3 3586 7104
Telefax: +81 3 3586 7187
Internet: gmd-tokyo@gmd.co.jp