GRADUATE Program

Toward realizing "super smart society (Society 5.0)" where information technology is expected to help the creation of new value and services, the field of informatics is becoming more and more important. The Coronavirus disease pandemic has forced an acceleration in digital transformation and revealed the importance of information technology. Rising from the traditional foundations of information science and engineering, informatics represents a comprehensive, interdisciplinary research field that examines information-related issues, including issues in the data, the humanities, and the social sciences.

The Department of informatics established at the National Institute of Informatics (NII), which is the only comprehensive academic informatics institute in Japan, offers a Ph.D. program in informatics to educate and cultivate researchers in order to develop a solid grounding in advanced informatics and expertise across a broad range of disciplines, as well as flexibility in perspective and sophisticated technical knowledge. Candidates for the Ph.D. program are also expected enter the ranks of international and interdisciplinary professionals well-versed in informatics.

NII has a clear vision of the students we hope to cultivate: researchers with a keen interest in informatics - an interdisciplinary field encompassing the natural sciences, humanities, and social sciences - dedicated to realizing an advanced information-based society, and capable of serving as leaders in the field of informatics. We seek students with the aptitude to become sophisticated professionals devoted to the development of information technologies that will contribute to societal progress, as well as members of society with a strong interest in acquiring broader perspectives and deeper technical knowledge as they serve in the workforce.

In the Department of Informatics, we expect our future students to meet the challenges of the 21st century. We are confident that the progress and advancement of these students in informatics will change the world.

The department of Informatics consists of six multi-disciplinary research fields: Foundations of Informatics, Information Infrastructure Science, Software Science, Multimedia Information Science, Intelligent Systems Science, and Information Environment Science. These fields cover not only the traditional domains of computer science and information engineering, but also the domains in data science such as artificial intelligence or mathematical modeling, and even issues in the humanities and the social sciences. Our department is aiming at resolving problems in these domains from basic, applied, and practical points of view, and, at the same time, at educating and fostering not only researchers but also highly-skilled professionals, who will be eligible for next leaders in the field of informatics.

Our department has the five-year Ph.D. course and the three-year Ph.D. course: the former is for students having a bachelor degree where students can take plenty of time to develop their research subjects, while the latter is for students who earned a master degree where students can concentrate on research themes through enriching their research experiences. Our dual-degree program provides students with opportunities to go abroad to be supervised on their Ph.D. research topics at our partner universities/institutions. Moreover, as members of the National Institute of Informatics (NII), students can study in an internationally collaborative environment on a daily basis, participate in various research projects at NII, and are trained to become international researchers. The fact that we have a high percentage of foreign students is also an important feature of our department. Many of lectures are available in English, seminars at quite a few laboratories are held in English, and cross-cultural communication is frequently exchanged.

By offering an enriched cross-cultural environment, we aim at having our students trained with global perspectives and visions in building their extensive knowledge and high expertise in the field of informatics.

The Department of Informatics is installed in the National Institute of Informatics (NII), and research staff (professors and associate professors) of NII supervise Sokendai students. Since NII is an internationally well-known research institute in Informatics, researchers from all over the world come and work there. As a member of the institute, students will be able to learn and conduct research while experiencing international research daily. Students conduct their research under the supervision of their professors and advisors, present their findings at international conferences and in journal papers, and receive their PhD degree. It is the mission of the Department of Informatics: to foster world-class, top-level researchers by the world-class research staff and the environment. To assist the research activities of the students, the institute employs students (excluding working students and government-sponsored students) as research assistants to provide financial support for them.

The Department of Informatics is based on the National Institute of Informatics, which has international exchange programs with about 100 universities and institutions around the world, and conducts collaborative researches in a full spectrum of informatics. In our department, more than half of the students are from foreign countries, and the lectures and research supervisions are mostly provided in English. We also have various kinds of scholarship programs as well as support for internships abroad, and the students are encouraged to present their research results at high-level international conferences. We aim to have our students acquire extensive knowledge and high expertise in the field of informatics with global perspectives in our cross-cultural environment.