The most powerful earthquake on record in Japan, a 9.0 magnitude undersea tremor with an epicenter 70 km from the northeast shores of Miyagi Prefecture struck east Japan on March 11, 2011. This subsequently generated a tsunami, which devastated a wide expanse along the Pacific coastline, including the portion of the city of Sendai and resulted in the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.

Tohoku University and its School of Engineering (SoE) were not exempt from damage. Yet the SoE's leading edge R&D has since been put to use in dealing with the wide range of engineering problems emanating from that fateful day.

Within the many great challenges to face, a consortium set up by Prof. Hisada, whose lab focuses on civil engineering research, in particular concrete, took the lead of finding a method to recycle waste materials, totaling millions of tons. Nevertheless, our faculty members are now paving the way into the future through application of various technologies to recover from this tragedy and move ahead toward a safer and sustainable society. There are many other technologies being born at SoE, and you are invited to discover more at the website of the Tohoku University Research News of Engineering (TUNE) http://tune.eng.tohoku.ac.jp/