This chapter covers funding acquisition strategies for advancing materials science research. Through real data and Python analysis, you will understand the characteristics of major research funding sources such as KAKENHI, JST, NEDO, NSF, and ERC, along with application strategies, best practices for raising acceptance rates, and methods for securing industry-academia collaboration funding.
Learning Objectives
By reading this chapter, you will be able to:
- ✅ Understand the characteristics and target fields of major research funding sources (KAKENHI, JST, NEDO, NSF, ERC, etc.)
- ✅ Explain strategies and best practices for writing effective grant proposals
- ✅ Analyze trends in funded projects with Python and apply them to selecting research themes
- ✅ Understand the process and success factors for securing industry-academia collaboration funding
3.1 Overview of Major Research Funding Sources
🇯🇵 Research Funding Sources in Japan
Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI)
Japan's largest competitive research funding program, administered by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).
- Budget scale: Approximately 240 billion yen per year (FY2023)
- Categories: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Challenging Research, Scientific Research on Innovative Areas, International Collaborative Research, and others
- Eligibility: Researchers at universities and research institutions
- Acceptance rate: About 26% (varies by category)
JST (Japan Science and Technology Agency)
- CREST: Team-based research (5 years, up to 500 million yen/year)
- PRESTO (Sakigake): Individual research (3 years, up to 40 million yen/year)
- ERATO: Director-led research (5 years, up to 1 billion yen/year)
NEDO (New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization)
Specializes in application-oriented research in industrial technology and energy fields.
- Budget scale: Approximately 150 billion yen per year
- Priority fields: Storage batteries, hydrogen, carbon-neutral materials
- Industry-academia collaboration: Corporate participation is fundamental
🇺🇸 Research Funding Sources in the United States
NSF (National Science Foundation)
A federal government agency with an emphasis on basic research.
- Budget scale: Approximately $9.5B per year
- Materials-related program: DMR (Division of Materials Research)
- Acceptance rate: About 25%
DOE (Department of Energy)
Strong in energy-related materials research.
🇪🇺 Research Funding Sources in the EU
ERC (European Research Council)
- Starting Grant: Early-career researchers (2-7 years after PhD), up to €1.5M over 5 years
- Consolidator Grant: Mid-career researchers (7-12 years), up to €2M over 5 years
- Advanced Grant: Established researchers, up to €2.5M over 5 years
3.2 KAKENHI Application Strategy
Characteristics of Proposals Likely to Be Funded
- Clear definition of the research problem: Why (why it matters) → What (what you will do) → How (how you will achieve it)
- Explicit originality and impact: Differentiation from existing research, academic and societal significance
- Demonstration of feasibility: Preliminary data, validity of methodology, concreteness of the research plan
- Alignment with research track record: A match between the applicant's expertise and the research problem
Common Reasons for Rejection
- ❌ Unclear research objectives
- ❌ Lack of originality (appears to be an extension of existing research)
- ❌ Insufficient justification of methodology
- ❌ Not realistic as a 5-year (or 3-year) research plan
3.5 Chapter Summary
What You Learned
- ✅ Why materials science is emphasized as a national strategy (economic impact, technological sovereignty, contribution to the SDGs)
- ✅ Characteristics of the materials science policies of major countries
- Japan: Strategy for Strengthening Materials Innovation Capability (promoting DX)
- United States: MGI (integration of computation, experiment, and data)
- EU: Horizon Europe (emphasis on sustainability)
- China: Development of the new materials industry (raising self-sufficiency)
- South Korea: Strategy focused on specific fields
- ✅ International comparison of industry-government-academia collaboration models (open innovation vs. startups vs. state-led)
- ✅ Analysis of policy documents with Python (keyword extraction, investment comparison, trend analysis)
Key Points
1. Materials science is a "foundational × strategic" technology
Materials are the foundation of every industry and, at the same time, the key to solving strategic challenges such as climate change and energy security.
2. Regional differences in policy
Policy priorities and approaches differ according to each country's or region's strengths, industrial structure, and societal challenges.
3. The shift toward a data-driven approach
Worldwide, materials development is shifting from an experiment-centered approach to one that leverages computational science, AI, and databases.
To the Next Chapter
In the next chapter, we will study sustainability and environmental regulation. You will grasp the overall picture of the environmental regulations that materials scientists should understand, including the EU Green Deal, the circular economy, life cycle assessment (LCA), and the REACH regulation.
Exercises
Exercise 1: Policy Comparison (Difficulty: Easy)
Question: Identify the two largest differences between Japan's Strategy for Strengthening Materials Innovation Capability and the U.S. MGI, and explain the background of each.
Hint: Consider the industrial structure, the degree of digitalization, and the historical background of each policy.
Exercise 2: Keyword Analysis with Python (Difficulty: Medium)
Question: Analyze an actual policy document (downloadable from the MEXT or NEDO websites) with the morphological analysis script in Code Example 1, and extract the top 10 important keywords.
Hint: To convert a PDF into text, you can use the pdfplumber library.
Exercise 3: Forecasting Investment Trends (Difficulty: Hard)
Question: Using the data from Code Example 2, forecast the 2025 research investment of Japan and China with linear regression. Visualize the forecast results and evaluate the accuracy.
Hint: Use sklearn.linear_model.LinearRegression and evaluate accuracy with the R² score.
References
- MEXT (2021). Strategy for Strengthening Materials Innovation Capability. https://www.mext.go.jp/
- White House (2011). Materials Genome Initiative for Global Competitiveness. https://www.mgi.gov/
- European Commission (2021). Horizon Europe Strategic Plan 2021-2024. Horizon Europe Official Page
- Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of China (2016). Guidelines for the Development of the New Materials Industry.
- OECD (2023). Science, Technology and Innovation Scoreboard.