History

Keiichiro Yasukawa and Kenjiro Matsukawa founded Meiji College of Technology as a private institution in 1907. They donated a large amount of their own finances to improve engineering education and development in the Kitakyushu industrial area, and inaugurated the college in 1909. Kenjiro Yamakawa, the first president, established the fundamental principle "to instill a deep knowledge of science and engineering in high caliber students." Although the college became a national institute in 1921, and then Kyushu Institute of Technology in 1949, our fundamental principles have remained unchanged.

In 1986, the School of Computer Science and Systems Engineering was first founded to promote industrial computerization in Japan. The Department of Bioscience and Bioinformatics created an interdisciplinary curriculum that combined information technology and systems engineering with biosciences and biotechnology, and attracted many talented professors from interdisciplinary frontiers.

One of our outstanding advantages over other bioinformatics-related organizations is our utilization of the bottom-up approach from the molecular to cellular level. In 2001, critically important research was initiated at the School of Computer Science and Systems Engineering: the bottom-up approach-based Bioalgorithm project. BioInfo Bank databases were created, which store physicochemical information related to the structure and function of biomolecules, as well as their interactions. An integrative simulator, the Computer-Aided Design of LIVing systEms (CADLIVE), was developed, which enables scientists to rationally design biological networks within a cell. SKIN-CAD was also developed for researching of the dynamics of drug permeation through the skin. Its use commercialized various percutaneous therapies.

In 2004, we established the Asian Bioinformatics Research and Education Network (ABREN) to enable the exchange of education and research information through the World Wide Web. More than 1000 students and scientists join this expanding network every year. In 2011, our activity was awarded the Asia Pacific Bioinformatics Network (APBioNet) service prize. Kyutech concluded the agreement on the cooperation promotion with the Iizuka Hospital and Iizuka City.

APBioNet Service Award

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