Vision
AI has the potential to transform medicine. Yet realizing this potential requires more than AI expertise alone. Physicians must be able to understand and trust AI-driven decisions. The unique challenges of medical data must be addressed head-on. And there must be a clear pathway from research to real-world impact. Only when all of these conditions are met can truly reliable "Medicine × AI" become a reality.
In this project, researchers in informatics and medicine at Osaka Metropolitan University collaborate with the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), one of the world's largest AI research institutions, to advance medical AI across four pillars: prediction, genome analysis, explainable AI, and large language model applications. Through a multilayered network that bridges informatics and medicine, Japan and Germany, faculty and students, we aim to build AI technologies that physicians can understand and trust.
A distinctive feature of this project is our "X-type international human resource development" model. In this approach, for example, a student who completes a master's degree in one country advances to a doctoral program in the other. Unlike conventional short-term exchange programs where researchers return to their home institutions (U-turn model), the X-type model weaves the two organizations together through sustained personnel exchange, building a strong research network rooted in both countries.
We are also committed to translating research into societal impact. DFKI has a proven track record of fostering over 100 startups from its research outcomes. Drawing on this experience, we provide opportunities for students and early-career researchers to turn their research into entrepreneurial ventures.
This project is supported by the ASPIRE program (Adopting Sustainable Partnerships for Innovative Research Ecosystem), led by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST).
Members
Osaka Maetropolitan University
- Koichi Kise (PI)
- Shingo Ata
- Yusuke Nojima
- Kai Cai
- Masakazu Iwamura
- Manato Fujimoto
- Shoya Ishimaru
- Ayumi Shitani
- Satoshi Uematsu
- Makoto Higuchi
- Yasutoshi Kido
- Yukihiro Kaneko
- Wakaba Fukushima
- Hiroshi Kakeya
- Daiju Ueda
- Hirotaka Takita
- Yasuhito Mitsuyama
- Hiroshi Okamura
- Waki Imoto
- Ken-Ichi Oinuma
- Soichiro Nakako
- Makoto Moriguchi
- Tomoka Matsuura
- Rie Mizuno
- Yuta Nonomiya
- Arata Sakiyama
- Andrew William Vargo
- Hiroshi Taniwaki
- Ryota Kawai
- Masahiro Hyodo
- Eric M. Vernon
- Peter Neigel
- Marco Stricker
- Christian Brinkhaus
- Shota Arai
- Shaonan Liu
- Tomoya Ogawa
- Zonghuan Zhuang
- Toma Hara
- Haruto Sato
- Atilla Yilmaz
- Yume Takahashi
- Norika Furuta
Kyusyu University
- Ryoma Bise (Co-PI)
- Seiichi Uchida
- Brian Kenji Iwana
- Daiki Suehiro
- Katutoshi Masai
- Shota Harada
- Shoji Toyota
- Shumpei Takezaki
- Kaito Shiku
- Shinnosuke Matsuo
- Yugo Kubota
- Masashi Tahara
- Jiseok Lee
- Masaki Akiba
- Ryo Ishiyama
- Kohki Akiba
- Taisei Ishimaru
- Ichika Seo
- Takamasa Yamaguchi
- Jun Masuhisa
- Mikio Osajima
- Tetsu Go
- Souichi Mita
DFKI
- Andreas Dengel (Co-PI)
- Markus Junker
- Sheraz Ahmed
- Dominique Mercer
- Nabeel Khalid
- Duway Nicolas Lesmes Leon
- Christoph Balada
- Yuichiro Iwashita
- Kanta Yamaoka
- Muhammad Nabeel Asim
- Ko Watanabe
- Sebastian Vollmer
- David Antony Selby
- Mohammed Ibrahim
- Andrea Sipka
- Maximilian Sprang
- Miloofar Maani
- Islam Mesabah
- Sumantrak Mukherjee
- Adriano Lucieri