An industry-academia collaboration project led by Assoc. Prof. Yudai Honma, who serves as the University of Tokyo’s laboratory director, has been launched.
On March 30, 2026, the University of Tokyo and DENSO Corporation announced that they had signed an industry-academia collaboration agreement to run for 10 years, beginning April 1, 2026. This collaborative initiative marks the University of Tokyo’s first long-term, comprehensive organization-to-organization partnership in the field of mobility, with the Institute of Industrial Science serving as the core hub. Assoc. Prof. Yudai Honma will lead this initiative as the laboratory director on behalf of the University of Tokyo.
Under this collaborative innovation initiative, we have adopted the shared vision of “A Society That Grows the More It Moves: Future Social Value Expanding from Mobility.” With mobility as the starting point, we aim to realize a new social system that connects energy, data, and urban infrastructure. In particular, with Drive-by Wireless Power Transfer (DWPT) and mathematical optimization as core technologies, we will take an integrated approach to energy supply and mobility utilization within logistics networks—including urban areas and expressways—and work to build social infrastructure that balances economic rationality with sustainability. Four key themes have been identified: creating social value through energy circulation and data integration; evolving mobility in coordination with social infrastructure; strengthening and deepening the technological foundation that supports sustainable value creation; and fostering highly skilled professionals capable of envisioning and implementing the society of the future.
This agreement marks a major milestone in the expansion of Assoc. Prof. Y.Honma’s research—which has focused on wireless power transmission during vehicle operation and the mathematical optimization of mobility infrastructure—into a more long-term and implementation-oriented direction. Furthermore, this initiative was covered by various media outlets, including the Nikkei, and was widely publicized as a new research framework resulting from industry-academia collaboration.
