The Institute of Fluid Science (IFS) was originally founded in 1943 as the Institute of High-Speed Mechanics and was reorganized in 1989 under Director Shinichi Kamiyama to form the present Institute of Fluid Science. In April 2025, Tohoku University launched its activities as the Japan’s first and only University for International Research Excellence, and in line with this, various strategic organizational reforms and personnel measures have been undertaken at the IFS as described below. The IFS aims to promote world-leading research that integrates advanced academic fields based on fundamental fluid science and applies its outcomes to priority science and technology areas. Through these activities, the Institute seeks to contribute to solving social issues and to foster next-generation researchers and engineers of international standards. Fluid science is an academic discipline that elucidates not only the flow of matter, but also the flows of heat, energy, and information from both macroscopic and microscopic perspectives. From the macroscopic viewpoint, it treats the flows of gases and liquids as continuum flows, while from the microscopic viewpoint, it addresses the flows of molecules, atoms, and charged particles, thus covering various phenomena in a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. When linked to application fields, the research topics span keywords such as energy and environment, aerospace and mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering, new devices, high-performance materials and materials science, and fluid systems.

In October 2022, the IFS reorganized the former Innovative Energy Research Center and established the Global Collaborative Research and Education Center for Integrated Flow Science (IFS-GCORE). IFSGCORE proposes “Integrated Flow Science,” a new concept built on a robust academic foundation in fluid science and encompassing the resolution of social issues in diverse application domains. By integrating and strengthening the international activities previously conducted by the International Research and Education Center and the accomplishments of the Lyon Center, which has achieved remarkable results through organizational collaboration between Japan and France, the IFS is promoting wide-ranging international collaborative research on fluids and materials. With this reorganization, the scope of collaborative research has been greatly expanded to cutting-edge fields such as carbon neutrality and advanced semiconductors, with the aim of contributing to the resolution of social challenges. In FY2024, the continued enhancement of IFS-GCORE was approved, and its scale of activities has been approximately doubled. As a result, the IFS now consists of three research divisions — the Creative Flow Research Division, the Complex Flow Research Division, and the Nanoscale Flow Research Division — together with IFS-GCORE and the Lyon Center, comprising 31 research laboratories, as well as a technical office that supports all practical operations related to research facilities.

In 2010, the IFS was accredited as a Joint Usage / Research Center for fluid science by Japan’s MEXT, and it has been supporting over 100 collaborative research projects with domestic and overseas collaborators every year, in addition to the joint research conducted by individual research funds. Furthermore, to strengthen and promote research activities, the IFS also includes the Advanced Fluid Information Research Center (AFI), which operates a high-performance supercomputer, and the Advanced Flow Experimental Research Center (AFX), which operates several wind tunnel and shock wave related facilities.

By combining advanced numerical simulations, large-scale data analysis, and state-of-the-art experiments, these centers provide strong support for the development of Integrated Flow Science. In 2015, the IFS adopted “IFS VISION2030,” which sets the goal of becoming a “world hub of fluid science” by 2030 through the utilization of global collaborative research networks and aims to realize a safe, secure, and healthy society as well as a comfortable and affluent society. As one of the strategies for research outcomes and impact, the concept of research clusters was introduced. Following a revision of this vision in 2021, five clusters for solving social issues were defined: environment and energy, nano and micro, health, welfare and medicine, and aerospace. The IFS is actively working to apply its research accomplishments to the resolution of social challenges through these clusters. As part of these efforts, in FY2021 the JSPS Core-to-Core Program “International research exchange hub on ammonia combustion and materials for realization of a low-carbon society” was launched. In September 2022, the IHI–Tohoku University Co-creation Research Center of Ammonia Value Chain for Carbon Neutrality was established. Furthermore, from October 2024, the HYCOMBS project—an international collaboration for the utilization of fuel ammonia supported by CREATE, a national funding agency in Singapore—was initiated together with Cambridge University, CNRS and so forth as well as the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University. In April 2025, the Office of International Research Strategy was newly established in IFS to comprehensively oversee the research support activities previously undertaken by the Research Support Office and the GCORE. Based on the university-wide strategic promotion of research support, one University Research Administrator (URA) has been newly appointed, integrating functions related to the organization of international conferences, various international exchange activities, collaboration with university headquarters on international affairs, and strategic public relations. By November 2025, two Distinguished Professors under the International Research Excellence framework had taken up their posts at the IFS, thereby strengthening the research activities in wide-ranging fields with a particular focus on decarbonization.

Today’s social issues are becoming increasingly complex and cross-cutting, and their resolution requires interdisciplinary collaboration and international cooperation. Leveraging the distinctive characteristics of Integrated Flow Science, which targets phenomena involving transport of matter and energy as well as chemical reactions, the IFS will continue to further advance both fundamental and applied research in close collaboration with domestic and international partners. The International Conference on Flow Dynamics (ICFD), which has been held annually in Sendai since 2004, marked its 22nd edition in November 2025. A total of 868 participants, including 413 international participants from 29 countries, attended the conference, and it continues to grow as an international networking platform for Integrated Flow Science. We sincerely ask for your continued support, guidance, and encouragement.

December, 2025