Outline

The “WISE Doctoral System for Mature Students” is the first system in Japan, is designed to solve the problems of economic circumstances and career development that are the main reasons for Japanese students to give up on doctoral studies, and to foster doctoral talents through cooperation with researchers from other fields and industry.

In this program, excellent students are hired by companies after completing the master’s course (or after completing the first year of the doctoral course), and at the same time, they are allowed to start the doctoral course as working students. In other words, they can do research as a doctoral student while receiving a salary from the company. Also, the student will continue to be employed by the company after acquiring the doctoral degree.

We hold a briefing on this program every year. After the briefing, students who are interested in the program will have individual meetings with partner companies to ensure that their research interests match before applying for this program.

Message from Students Who Took Advatage of the System

Second-year Doctoral student
who applied for this system in April 2022.

By taking advantage of the “WISE Doctoral System for Mature Students”, I feel that it is a privilege to be able to interact and discuss with people from various disciplines while still being a student. If there is not much of a connection between your speciality and the assigned research field, balancing work and research can be very difficult because you have to work with two research topics at the same time. However, if it is a research field in which you are interested, it can be considered you have other specializations.