Message from the Program Coordinator
Message from the Program Coordinator and Professor, Graduate School of Engineering,
Kikuo FUJITA
The Cross-Boundary Innovation (CBI) Program represents an innovative approach in interdisciplinary doctoral education that aims to train a new generation of PhD holders with the leadership skills essential to tackle the unprecedented and intricate challenges that our world faces. In addition to the ample opportunities at Osaka University for education and research advances, the CBI Program offers students a unique opportunity to gain a diverse range of knowledge, skills and experiences. In order to cultivate innovative leaders with specialized and comprehensive skills, the Program has mobilized excellent lecturers and researchers from inside and outside Osaka University, from the public and private sectors, to create an enriching environment where students from different faculties can gather and exchange ideas across disciplines.
The program’s class modules, activities, workshops and projects are designed to cultivate educational depth and transferable skills. A broad outlook and logical thinking are further boosted through English-language classes as well as an international field study course where students experience different cultures and socioeconomic dynamics, and come face to face with issues of the world’s center and periphery. Additional components of the program move on to more hands-on learning. These include a comprehensive project, where student teams engage in depth with a social problem under consultation with stakeholders and CBI instructors, and an “innovative practice,” where CBI participants step out on their own and put their training to the test to uncover a problem in the real world and to draft solutions.
No matter the workplace or whether the issues are domestic or international, the challenges our societies face call for graduate students from a wide range of fields and with the interdisciplinary background that the CBI curriculum can offer.