GRADUATE Program

Informatics plays a crucial role in realizing a smart society, where innovative information technology continuously generates new values and services. As society undergoes rapid digitization, the significance of information technology and the need for real human interactions are being reevaluated. Informatics is a comprehensive academic discipline encompassing traditional information science and engineering, along with AI, data science, and digital humanities and social informatics.

The National Institute of Informatics (NII) conducts extensive research in informatics and maintains cutting-edge infrastructure for academic information dissemination. Collaborative research with domestic and international universities and research institutions contributes to the development of the information society. By linking research and education with business, the institute fosters innovative research and education.

The Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI) is an independent graduate university supported by 20 inter-university research institutes. NII is responsible to administrate the Informatics Program at SOKENDAI for nurturing creative individuals with a broad perspective in informatics. Esteemed professors from the NII engage students in solving individual problems and developing high-level insight. The program focuses on project planning, completion, discovering and addressing new challenges, information gathering, and research presentation skills.

We welcome motivated students to join the Informatics Program. Enrolling in the program will enable them to become well-rounded professionals capable of making a variable impact. Let's go on a journey to contribute to the advanced information society.

The Informatics Program 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 traditional computer science and information engineering including AI, data science and mathematical modeling, but also social science including social modeling, social simulation. Our program is aiming at attacking 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 next leaders in informatics.

Our program has the Five-year doctoral program and the Three-year doctoral program: the former is for students having a bachelor degree where students can sufficiently develop their research objectives, 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, students can study their research themes as international collaboration, participate in various research projects at NII, and are trained to play important roles as an international researchers. The fact that we have a high percentage of foreign students is also an important advantage of our program. Most lectures are given in English, and seminars and discussions at laboratories are held in English. Students in our program come from a diverse range of countries, and the cross-cultural exchange among students is also a valuable environment for young people who aspire to international careers.

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

The Informatics Program is established in the National Institute of Informatics (NII), and NII research staff, i.e., professors and associate professors, supervise SOKENDAI students. NII is an internationally well-known research institute in informatics, and researchers from all over the world come and work there. The students enrolled in the Informatics Program also become members of NII, conduct their academic and research activities under the supervision of the research staff in such an international research environment, present their findings in international conferences and journals, and finally receive their PhD degrees. It is the mission of the Informatics Program to foster world-class researchers by the world-class research staff. Also, NII employs many of the students as research assistants to provide financial support.