Cross-Department Doctoral Course
-Research Assistant Final Debrief Session-

Date:January 27, 2006
Venue:Takeda Hall, Takeda Building, Asano campus

Members of "Development of a Low Cost Aerial Photography System", which won the highest award. Prof. Kasagi, 21COE program leader (on the left) and Prof. Sakai (on the right)

In a Cross-Department Doctoral Course lecture called "Mechanical Systems Innovation," a main axis of the graduate school education in this COE Program, research assistants (RAs) gather from seven relevant departments and divide into groups. In each group, RAs cooperatively find engineering problems in society, formulate them, and propose solutions to them. Through this process, we aim to cultivate the project management skills and leadership abilities of RAs. In this fiscal year, 30 RAs were divided into seven groups and have collaborated with each other.

As a conclusion to the lecture, the Research Assistant Final Debrief Session was held on January 27, 2006. Business promotion members from 10 major companies, 21 COE project promoters, Postdocs and RAs attended English oral and poster sessions given by each group. "Development of a Low Cost Aerial Photography System" was selected for the highest award, "Investigation of a Functional Fluid Applied to Medical Technology" for the design prize, and "Translation from Technical Knowledge to General Knowledge" for the idea prize, respectively.

The visitors from industries esteemed the originality of the themes and English presentations and gave RAs valuable advice on how to manage projects.

The wide acquaintances established during this activity will be of great value to the RAs in their graduate school lives.

[PBL Lecture]
[Ph.D. Internship]

Joint UT-ETH Exchange Program

In the laboratory

The objective of this program is to cultivate internationality, communication and project management skills for young researchers through international exchange with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH, Zurich), which is an overseas base of 21 COE.

Students who hoped to apply for this program were obligated to make contact with their host professors, suggest research plans and obtain the host professor's informal consent for acceptance. Next, five research assistants were selected after an English hearing. They were dispatched to Zurich, Switzerland, with a project research associate for the month from October 1, 2005 to November 1, 2005.

Dispatched students attempted to develop their expertise and broaden their perspectives though seminars and symposia held at ETH Zurich, while they advanced their own research by collaborating with foreign researchers as scheduled.

A symposium entitled "So, you've got a Ph.D. What's next ?", in which Ph.D.s who play active parts in industry introduced their own career paths, provided good opportunities for the students to recognize the difference between the positioning of Ph.D.s in European industry and that in Japanese industry and to reconsider their own career paths. In the closing days of the period in Zurich, a joint symposium with researchers and faculty members at ETH Zurich was held, and the Japanese students presented their achievements during the month.

Although this was the first trial, the dispatched students made research achievements and laid the groundwork for future collaboration. They created individual relationships with foreign researchers through their disparate discussions. It seems that these experiences increased their confidence. Students from ETH Zurich subsequently visited the University of Tokyo, and the interaction between students at the two bases has been growing. This program will be carried out continuously after the next fiscal year.