1) Research Student or Interns

We basically do not accept research students (kenkyu-sei). If you want to join us, please directly enroll in the official graduate program. We host visiting students or interns with strong recommendation from an expert in the field, or with sufficient research/development experience (academic publications are desirable). If you hope to join us as a visiting student or an intern, please send me a research proposal (see below) together with a resume (CV) and your desired schedule (when to come and how long you stay). Please also clarify whether you are self-funded or not. There are also some public funding support that you can apply for short term stay in Japan (NSF, JSPS)

2) Enroll in the Graduate School

Our group is a part of Computer Science Department and Creative Informatics, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology. We are accepting graduate students in master's and doctor's program in both departments. Master's program takes 2 years and doctor's program takes 3 years. You must take an entrance exam and pass it to join us. It happens in August and February to start in October and April, respectively. See here for details. Computer science department and creative informatics department use different exams, so you should chose the one suitable for you (e.g. creative informatics has programming test). You can see the past exams in the same page (we provide English versions). Our department also provide Special Admission (but it is very selective). If you have procedural questions, please contact the Office of International Students. If you decide to take an exam, please contact me beforehand introducing youself and describing your research plan (see below).

As for masters program, our university or our group does not provide any finantial support (you need to pay tuition, approx 500,000YEN per year). You must be self-funded or need to find finantial support by yourself. As for doctors program, there is no guaranteed support by default, but our university and our group provide various kinds of programs. So if you apply for a program and get accepted, it is probably possible some sort of financial support. We would recommend you to apply for Monbukagakusho (MEXT) scholarship. We do NOT give informal acceptance to MEXT sholarship applicants BEFORE passing the exam. Decision will be made at the entrance exam.

In addition to pass the entrace exam to enroll in the graduate school, you need to convince us that you will be productive to join our group (we choose best ones among those who passed the exam). So, if you really plan to apply for the graduate progam, please prepare a good research proposal (description of what you want to work on) and send it to us (in PDF with figures) BEFORE sending application document to the university. Note that it is prohibited to communicate with an applicant AFTER receiving an application document. We will decide based on the content of proposal. Good starting point is to see my past research, students' work, and project report. You should also familiazie yourself with publications at related conferences (e.g UIST, SIGGRAPH, CHI, etc.). Good research proposal should start with previous work, identify limitations/problems to solve, and then propose how to solve the problem. It might be worth looking into my free online course to see what kind of researches we are working on.

3) Resources

• The Office of International Students (IST, U Tokyo)
• VISA consulting service (U Tokyo)
• Guide for prospective students (U Tokyo)