Infrastructure Research and Development Division

Research Summary

Aiming at the realization of RIKEN’s ICT Strategy, the division is designed to develop information technology for construction and operation of information infrastructure for researchers and provide support required for digital innovation in research methods and data-driven science. We work closely with researchers at RIKEN to promote the aggregation and utilization of research data, thereby contributing to the promotion of Open Science at RIKEN and in Japan.

Research Units

The unit promotes technological development related to the realization of information infrastructure, including the knowledge base necessary for organizing, integrating, and promoting the utilization of different kinds of research data produced at RIKEN. Specifically, we promote research and development associated with metadata attached to research data, develop a knowledge base by collecting and organizing metadata, and provide and support associated technology and tools for laboratories, as well as technology development required for the realization of open science. Furthermore, through open-science practices by employing the knowledge and the latest AI, we lead the era of data science and contribute to scientific and technological innovation with RIKEN’s researchers regardless of the research field.

The Data Management System Development Unit conducts research and development about a large-scale data integration system on RIKEN Data Science Infrastructure. Also, it provides user support for the system. We will push forward with "Open Science" by development and research about: How to manage research data from the perspective of middleware technique and operation policy and how to achieve the researcher-friendly data collection and distribution methods.

We, as part of R-IH, in charge of the IT infrastructure, aid research utilizing information networks. We focus on maximizing researcher’s performances by ensuring efficient network utilization and system/application optimization. Leveraging insights from our infrastructure operations, we aim to improve Internet Protocol performance, and to develop new protocols, in addition to deploying those outcomes.

To promote open science in the life sciences, the Unit conducts research and development to collect a wide variety of research data in the life sciences produced by RIKEN and facilitate secondary use. With all of RIKEN’s life science research centers’ participation, we will develop the foundation for open science in the life sciences and pioneer a new style of life sciences.

The Unit conducts research and development to promote open science in the medical sciences by ensuring both the safe handling of human-derived data and the smooth execution of analyses at a high level. With the participation of all RIKEN research centers that work with human-derived data, the Unit will develop rules and a computational environment for safe, effective, and efficient research on human subjects, with an eye toward intra-RIKEN, national, and international collaboration.

This unit integrates a wide variety of RIKEN research data on fundamental physics and related fields and conducts research and development for secondary use of the data in order to promote open science in the field of fundamental physics. The unit builds an effective and efficient infrastructure for data sharing and data processing in the field of fundamental physics under the collaboration of RIKEN's research centers related to fundamental physics.

Contact

Infrastructure Research and Development Division,RIKEN Information R&D and Strategy Headquarters
RIKEN Information Science Building
2‑1 Hirosawa, Wako, Saitama 351‑0198, Japan