Inspired by the Nobel Prize, Japan's Tokushima wants to develop LED into a backbone industry

According to Japan's Kyodo News Agency on October 14, Shuji Nakamura (60), a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, won this year's Nobel Prize in Physics for developing blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Nakamura’s alma mater is Tokushima University, and the Nichia Chemical Industry Company where he once worked is also located in Tokushima Prefecture. In Tokushima Prefecture, everything from the lighting of bridges and tourist roads to traffic lights is LED. The county has long used LEDs in landscape construction and industrial revitalization under the slogan "LED for Tokushima". Local stakeholders expect Nakamura’s award to “provide a strong boost.”