A new project just started, supported by JST 'FOREST (Fusion Oriented REsearch for disruptive Science and Technology)'

The research proposal by Associate Professor Yutaro Kashiwa, titled “Quality Assurance Foundation for AI-Driven Software Development” (Goto Panel), has been selected for the FY2025 call of the “Creation of Innovative Research (FOREST) Program” (https://www.jst.go.jp/souhatsu/en/index.html) by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST). The project will be supported in principle for 7 years (up to a maximum of 10 years), with direct expenses of up to 50 million yen, in addition to separately-allocated indirect expenses (30% of direct expenses) and additional support for Research Assistants (RAs).

The FOREST Program is a competitive funding scheme that provides one of the longest and most stable research budgets in Japan, targeting young researchers who are independent or soon to be independent. In the FY2025 (6th) call, 2,217 applications were submitted by diverse researchers, and only 257 were selected after document screening and interview screening (pre-evaluation). The acceptance rate was approximately 11.6%, and overall the program is known as a highly competitive scheme in which only researchers who have prevailed through multi-stage screening with an approximately 10% acceptance rate are selected.

The FOREST Program promotes “emergent research” aimed at generating seeds that lead to disruptive innovation through diversity and fusion, without setting specific challenges or short-term goals. The program provides long-term support for free, challenging, and interdisciplinary research that is not bound by existing frameworks, while ensuring an environment in which researchers can concentrate on their work, in principle over a period of seven years. The program invites challenging and diverse research concepts from independent or soon-to-be-independent researchers, primarily young researchers, at universities and other research institutions, with a distinctive feature of “person-oriented” screening that places the highest priority on the researcher’s passion and originality. After selection, the program maximizes researcher discretion and aims to create seeds that lead to disruptive innovation under an appropriate research environment for carrying out emergent research.

The new project aims to establish foundational technologies for quality assurance in AI-driven software development. The project starts in August 2026. If students or companies are interested in this project, please feel free to contact us.