Aichi Institute of Technology is a private university located in, what might be regarded, as the ultimate company town given that Toyota (formerly Koroma) took the name of its largest and best-known employer in 1959.
The same year saw the institution, founded in 1912 as Nagoya Technical School of Electricity, acquire university status as the Nagoya Institute of Electricity, with a single faculty of electrical engineering.
It took the name of Aichi prefecture the following year and over the period between 1964 and 1974 in stages transferred its operations to the Yakusa campus on the edge of Toyota, to the east of Nagoya. The 151 acre site remains its main centre, supported by two smaller sites. The first is Motoyama, which hosts the graduate school of management and information science. The second is Jiyoguoka, which since 2010 has been the home of business administration and management and information systems – in Nagoya.
It aspires to produce "not only…engineers excelling within our own fields of technological expertise, but to educate compassionate and considerate engineers who care for humanity and the Earth in accordance with our education motto: Creation and Humanity".
The engineering discipline, which offers five different majors, four masters degrees and two doctoral programmes, accounts for around two-thirds of the student body which in 2017 numbered a little over 6,000.
Scientists from the university recently provided radio and optical equipment for Japan’s GOSAT-2 observation satellite, while students built a miniature replica, complete with sounds and movement, of the Rex robot from the Metal Gear Solid video game.
