2021 New Year Greetings

Happy New Year. Thank you for your continued support this year.

Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology took on a new executive structure in April last year, and began its activities as a university based on the vision of President set out here. However, as you know, the COVID-19 global crisis has forced all faculty and staff to work together to examine the nature of all university activities, while also working to quickly respond to the ongoing challenges. While prioritizing the safety of students and faculty and staff, the efforts of those involved to maximize and make the irreplaceable university life opportunities for current students as meaningful as possible have been extraordinary, but we have shared what is most important as a university and have continued to work while constantly making improvements. Once again, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to everyone inside and outside the university for their cooperation.
For a long time, our university has been promoting the development of human resources who will lead the future through world-class scientific research in agriculture, engineering, and their interdisciplinary fields, with the philosophy of realizing a sustainable society - "Let's make the Earth go round." In this context, our experience with the current COVID-19 pandemic has provided us with a great lesson to further consider the role that our university should play in the future and to develop clear actions for the next time. The current infectious disease problem should also be considered to have been created by the excessive damage that humanity has truly caused to the Earth. And this Earth is experiencing many events that have reached a level that is almost impossible to reverse, such as the crisis threatening the circulation of nitrogen, phosphorus, and water, and biodiversity, and energy problems, and these are already attacking us as "real problems" one after another. Agriculture and engineering, which are the foundations of our university, have a great mission to grasp the challenges we face more deeply and with foresight, share them with society, and find solutions, and I believe that we should once again recognize the importance of our role.
This year has been a different year than usual in many ways, but it is precisely at such times that we must take another look at what we have overlooked so far, think carefully about what we should do this year, and put it into action. I hope that we can all work together to make this a better year.

I sincerely wish you all the best in the coming year.