Goals of Education and Reaserch
Systems which can reform their structures through interation with environment and produce new functions when necessary are called complex adaptive systems or emergent systems. Evolution, development, adaptation, and learning are examples of emergent behavior of biological systems. Artificial systems such as society, economy, and organization are also viewed as complex adaptive systems. This department aims at understanding emergent behavior of those systems and developing methodology to design intelligent systems.
This department was founded in 1996. At the beginning of the fifth year, we have set four new research targets: understanding life and the brain, understanding humans and society, implementing autonomous intelligence, and creating cyber-society. Current research issues include the theory of adaptive learning, emergent systems, bioinformatics, systems and computational neurosciences, intelligent agents, intelligent robots, cyber-society, and intelligent human interfaces.. Researchers leading these fields serve as the faculty of this department.
Another aim of this department is to offer educational and training opportunities to improve creative capability. To achieve this goal, educational efforts are focused on research activities for master and doctral theses as well as lectures in classes. These are intended to improve the following abilities essential to creativity: (1) to find out research issues, (2) to resolve those issues, and (3) to exlain obtained results.
Computational Intelligence and Systems Science
MASTER COURSE
Freshmen work hard to take many courses. Seminars in laboratoties also help students to read technical papers and monographs. At the end of the first term, all students have an opportunity to see activity of laboratories other than their own. They are divided into small groups and join other laboratories to achieve some assignments. All students also participate in an exercise in internet debate. This improves skills of communication by internet.
Students have to conduct research for master theses for themselves. They are required to make three presentations. The first one is research proposal. They exlain their ideas for several minutes and receive advice from many professors. This is done in January of the freshman year or in April of the second year. They also present preliminary results in the autumn of the second year. Final results are presented in February and are evaluated. Degrees offered are Master of Science, Master of Engineering, and Master of Arts.
DOCTORAL COURSE
Students put most of efforts on their research and take few lectures. They make presentations at domestic and international research meetings to communicate with academic societies. They can participate in exercises at companies and research institutes. Degrees offered are Doctor of Science, Doctor of Engineering, and Doctor of Philosophy.