Gifu University

Overview

Gifu University

Gifu University (Gidai or Gifudai) is a public research university in Gifu City, Gifu Prefecture, Japan. It was founded in 1949 and received national university status in 2004. The university established a summer school in 1988 that offers a four-week course for students around the world. Gidai ranks highly among the top educational institutions of Japan.

Gifu University Key Statistics

The university is organized into six faculties and eight graduate schools. Among these are the Faculty of Regional Studies, Faculty of Applied Biological Sciences, the Graduate School of Natural Science and Technology, and the United Graduate School of Drug Discovery and Medical Information.

Gidai currently has a population of 5,640 undergraduate students and 1,595 graduate students. It also has approximately 874 employees, including academic and administrative staff.

The library system of Gidai is composed of the main library and the Medical Library. The main library houses a collection of 530,417 Japanese books, 218,035 foreign books, 9,655 Japanese magazines, 3,884 foreign magazines, 7,200 e-journals, and approximately 7,500 e-book titles. The university also has an affiliated hospital.

Other Gifu University key statistics include its inter-university academic agreement exchange with 50 institutions in 19 countries. These include the National Veterinary Science Quarantine Institute Veterinary Science Institute (Korea), the Faculty of Environmental Power Engineering, Krakow Institute of Technology (Poland), and the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Cardiopulmonary Blood (United States).

Gifu University Research

Research at the university focuses on life and environmental sciences. As such, its research programs primarily involve projects in the areas of infectious diseases, biological engineering, and new drug development. Its main funding source is Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology's 21st Century Center of Excellence Program.

The university's top three research fields are medicine, biology, and chemistry. Its researchers have been published in journals like Physical Review Letters, ChemInform, and the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Its researchers have participated in international conferences, such as the IEEE Conference on Electromagnetic Field Computation, the International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, and Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery.

The most cited publication from Gifu University research is Klionsky et al.’s (2018) “Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy,” published in Autophagy. It has been cited a total of 8,028 times to date. The second most cited paper is Fukuda et al.’s (1998) “Evidence for oscillation of atmospheric neutrinos,” published in Physical Review Letters. It has received a total of 7,831 citations.

Meanwhile, the university’s third most cited paper is Fukuda et al.’s (2011) “Bifidobacteria can protect from enteropathogenic infection through production of acetate,” published in Nature. It has been cited by papers, articles, and other publications around 1,761 times so far.

The university also runs several research centers. These include the Center for Infrastructure Management Technology and Research, the Applied Meteorological Research Center, the Animal Medical Center, and the Life Science Research Center.

In addition, they also have research bases in partnership with other institutions of higher education overseas. These include their lab station for environmental science at Sebelas Maret University in Indonesia, the biochemistry lab station at the University of Dhaka in Bangladesh, and the microbiology lab station at Kasetsart University in Thailand.