A 100-year-old motto guides TTI education to the future

Since its inception, TOYOTA TECHNOLOGICAL INSTITUTE (TTI), has adopted as its founding philosophy a motto, "Respect the spirit of research and creativity, and always strive to stay ahead of the times." The motto is a heritage of Sakichi Toyoda, who laid the basis of Toyota group about a century ago through the invention and industrial use of the world's most advanced automatic looms. Kiichiro Toyoda, the eldest son of Sakichi, after working for the further advances of loom technology, he initiated the automobile manufacturing and set up in 1937 the Toyota Motor Industries; at that time, he had not only a hope of laying the basis of Japanese automobile industry, but also a dream of creating a university to educate the young generation for the future of industry and society.

Thanks to hard works of Sakichi and Kiichiro Toyoda and other forerunners, the industrial technology of Japan has progressed rapidly, making Japan one of the leading countries in science and technology. But, in order to cope with a variety of global issues ahead of us and also to maintain our technological competitiveness, the promotion of advanced research and education is indispensable. By taking these factors into account, Toyota Motor Corporation under the leadership of Eiji Toyoda decided in 1977, its 40th anniversary year, to set up a very unique university of technology as one of its societal contributions. In 1981, TTI was opened and started to offer unique educational program, based on TTI's founding philosophy. Though TTI accepted initially only students with industrial work experience, the door has been opened since 1993 to new high-school graduates that now account for 80-90 percent of those admitted. The engineers and researcher educated in TTI are now playing active and important roles in various fields of technology.

Moreover, to make TTI a top-class research institution, the Ph.D program was opened in 1995 by recruiting a set of leading researchers in respective fields. Then, a sister institution, TTI at Chicago, was set up in 2003 with focus on basic computer science. Now, a number of cutting edge research works are conducted at TTI and TTI Chicago.