NIFS

Introduction

NIFS stands for "Fostering Human Resources in New Interdisciplinary Fields in the Society 5.0 Era". That is a new international graduate program, starting in 2024, of the Graduate School of Information Sciences (GSIS), Tohoku University, based on support from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan. That inherits and evolves our previous program "AIQDS", described on the website here.

The purpose of NIFS is to develop international human resources with comprehensive skills in solving real-world problems collaboratively with different disciplines or sectors, and inducing innovations for sustainable economic development, and shaping the Society 5.0 era. To do so, NIFS offers the students various lectures, exercises and project-based learnings in broad information sciences that involve data science together with economics, psychology, philosophy, and sciences of materials, aging, artificial intelligence etc. Moreover, NIFS also offers some subjects specialized in innovation and entrepreneurship.

The classes associated with NIFS are mainly in English, while the students are also encouraged to get familiar with Japanese language and culture, and to build various human networks.

Program

NIFS consists of a 2-year master's course with a 3-year doctoral course, broadly structured as below. In either course, the students should be enrolled in GSIS and supervised by respective professors in GSIS.

Master’s course

• Course work
  • Expertise courses
  • Fundamental data science courses
  • Innovation & Entrepreneurship courses
• Practical training and internship
  • Entrepreneurship training camps
  • Internship in private companies (elective)
• Research work for the master's degree

Doctoral course

• Innovation & Entrepreneurship project-based learning
• Advanced Entrepreneurship seminars
• Research work for the PhD

Financial Support

Application for NIFS is tied together with application for MEXT scholarship. Particularly excellent ones in the successful applicants for NIFS will be selected for MEXT scholarship. For 2-year master's course, NIFS can nominate for the scholarship up to 4 students each year, and the scholarship covers the following:

• Exemption from application, admission and tuition fees
• Monthly stipend: 146,000 JPY for 2 years in master's course
• Flight tickets between the applicant's country of nationality and Japan

For more details or those for 3-year doctoral course, please refer to the application guideline of MEXT here, or contact NIFS Admissions Office.