Organization and History

Organization

The Graduate School of Information Science and Electrical Engineering (ISEE) consists of the Department of Information Science and Technology and the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, which cover the following areas.

Department of Information Science and Technology: At the Department of Information Science and Technology, by systematically educating and researching information science and technology (a new discipline investigating the nature of the various phenomena called information related to nature, society, and humanity from both the viewpoints of form and meaning), we develop advanced technologies for an advanced information society and foster human resources who are capable of demonstrating new visions for information science and technology with an international perspective.

Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering: The Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering trains human resources who systematically comprehend a high degree of fundamental knowledge in electrical, electronic, and communications engineering; who have creative abilities (the ability to come up with ideas), planning abilities (the ability to give those ideas tangible form), and persuasive abilities (the ability to convince others with those ideas) in addition to expertise with a command over areas of information technology such as data science; who endeavor in solving increasingly complex problems with ingenuity that draws upon sophisticated expertise in the fields of information and communication as well as social infrastructure systems dealing with energy; and who are capable of taking the lead in new research and development and implementation that responds to the changes in society such as Society 5.0.

Structure

Department of Information Science and Technology

Information Architecture and Security Course
Data Science Course
AI and Robotics Course

Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Information Devices and Systems Course
Energy Devices and Systems Course

Department of Information Science and Technology

Department of Information Science and Technology

Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Quota

Departments Doctoral Course Master Course
Department of Information Science and Technology 29 105
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering 16 65
Total 45 170

Graduate School and Graduate Faculty System

Kyushu University adopted the above system in 2000 following the revision of the School Education Law, the first graduate school in Japan to do so. Because this new system separates the functions of education and research that are the emphasis of post-graduate education, the graduate school at Kyushu University is divided into the Graduate Faculty where research activities are carried out alongside assigned faculty and the Graduate School where postgraduate education is conducted. The conventional name of “Department” will only be used in the Graduate School, and the Graduate Faculty will use “Division.”

Separating research and education in this way allows for a more flexible Graduate School organization. To that end, Kyushu University opened the System LSI Research Center proposed by the ISEE in 2001. This center is a new kind of research institute for the entire university and is comprised of faculty members from ISEE as well as the Graduate Faculty of Engineering and the Graduate Faculty of Economics. The activities conducted here have been garnering attention from around Japan.

In April 2003, a new graduate school emerged from this system, the Graduate School of Systems Life Sciences. This graduate school is comprised of five divisions - Bioinformatics, Life Engineering, Medical Molecular Cell Biology, Molecular Life Sciences, and Biological Sciences - that fuse Informatics, science, and engineering to train students on how to work in the systems life sciences. In April 2009, the university founded the Graduate School of Integrated Frontier Science with the goal of integrating and creating new scientific knowledge. Faculty at the Graduate Faculty of Information Science and Electrical Engineering are assigned partial teaching duties at both graduate schools.

Department of I&E Visionaries

The ISEE combines information science (I) and electrical engineering (E) to advance world-class research and education. In order to continually improve based on the principle of “contributing to society and creating academic systems using a synthesis of I&E,” a long-lasting and flexible system that overcomes the rigidity and dated thinking of research and education must be introduced. In other words, this department aims to create a system that transcends the conflict between 1) strengthening “immutable” systems that accelerate world-class innovative research and education in the field of academic organization and 2) creating “mutable” systems that constantly generate and develop new research areas in response to the needs of society. In 2012, the Department of I&E Visionaries was recreated from existing departments based on Kyushu University’s Strategic Reform Plan for Activation Program.

Gigaphoton Next GLP Joint Research Department

This joint research department installed a Gigaphoton industrial laser in the university to research and develop new practical gas laser techniques. It uses high energy pulsed lasers in vacuum ultraviolet, deep ultraviolet, and infrared environments to study a variety of laser processes such as microfabrication, thin-film crystallization, thin film modification, cleaning, nanoparticle formation, and direct writing.

Related organizations

System LSI Research Center (established April 2001)

The System LSI Research Center at Kyushu University conducts comprehensive research on system LSI technologies as structural technologies for information-age societies with the goal of contributing to human civilization by creating those technological systems and clarifying how they are used in society. System LSI is an indispensable technology for designing a modern society and the aim of this research center is to clarify new system LSI technologies (with an emphasis on how those design technologies will be used) and provide guidance on designing 21st century societies from the perspective of its underlying technologies. It is the driving force behind the Campus-wide IC Card Project, the Silicon Sea Belt Fukuoka Project (in collaboration with Fukuoka Prefecture), and more. A satellite campus was established in November 2004 inside the Fukuoka Institute of System LSI Design Industry in Momochihama, an area with a high concentration of design companies.

Research Institute of Superconductor Science and Systems (established April 2003)

The superconductor information and energy systems that are expected to act as the foundation of future societies require proponents of creative scientific learning and a wealth of innovative technologies. With this in mind, the Research Institute of Superconductor Science and Systems was founded in April 2003 as an education and research facility open to all departments. It conducts educational research into the fundamental sciences behind superconductors, the application of information about them, and related energy systems with support from a range of departments, including the ISEE, the Faculty of Engineering, the Interdisciplinary Graduate School of Engineering Sciences, and the Faculty of Science.

It conducts both national and international joint research in collaboration with research institutes, universities, and businesses based on university-wide joint research projects while simultaneously supporting an array of research and international joint projects.

Research Institute for Information Technology (established April 2007)

The Research Institute for Information Technology at Kyushu University conducts research and development into a wide range of fields related to Informatics such as calculation, communication, information security, educational assistance, etc. It also acts as a national joint-use facility that uses large-scale computing systems like supercomputers to provide computation services to Japanese researchers. Additionally, as a member of the Information Infrastructure Initiative, it works alongside the Department of Information Systems to manage and invest in IT within Kyushu University centrally and efficiently.

Center for Japan-Egypt Cooperation in Science and Technology (established August 2010)

This center was established in August 2010 as the primary organization responsible for promoting and implementing support projects for Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology (E-JUST) (JICA project) - a national project between Egypt and Japan with Kyushu University as an Executive Steering Member - and MEXT special expenditure support projects in the newly established Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology (E-JUST). In the ISEE, the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and the Department of Advanced Information Technology established new specific educational research courses; the Electronic Communications Engineering Course and the Information Communications Engineering Course, allocated six full-time faculty, and currently works within the department and with faculty in other departments to promote collaborative opportunities such as supporting R&D at E-JUST, taking on E-JUST faculty and exchange students, conducting industry-academia joint research between Egypt and Japan, and developing a dual degree program with the ISEE.

Center of Plasma Nano-interface Engineering (established October 2010)

Understanding and controlling the interactions between plasma and nano-interfaces would catalyze tremendous developments in creating the advanced nanomaterials and nanostructures that are unattainable via conventional methods. This center was established as an international research hub to conduct systematic research into the fundamentals and applications of the plasma-nano-interface. It promotes reciprocal international education and collaborative industry-academic-government research with universities and research laboratories in Japan, Germany, South Korea, and beyond. The center helps Kyushu University become an international center for educational research by taking the brightest students from around the world and training them to become leaders in industry, academia, and governments across the globe.

Research and Development Center for Five-Sense Devices (established November 2013)

This center was established to address the various issues stemming from the modern globalization of our food and environment.
As the world’s first research center focused on every aspect of the three domains of gustation, olfaction, and tactile sensations - from research to application, development, and social integration - the center aims to develop innovative medical and health science innovations as well as safe, secure, and comfortable organic and biological devices that contribute to daily health, such as formulating recipes as flavor databases (food notation), olfactory sensors that can detect survivors in disaster areas, and sensor systems that integrate the five senses.

Education and Research Center for Mathematical and Data Science (established October 2017)

The goal of data science is to analyze various data using mathematical science techniques, judge the results, and derive new knowledge from them. It may sound straight-forward, but the world contains a diverse array of data and each analysis has a different purpose, requiring the application of different techniques. Therefore, the field needs data scientists in every subject who can determine the nature of data, select the most suitable techniques to extract the preferred information and knowledge for analysis, and occasionally develop new techniques.
Acknowledging this necessity, six centers (including this one) were established at universities around Japan with support from MEXT as locations to provide on-campus education with a focus on mathematics and data science.

Advanced Electric Propulsion Aircraft Research Center (established April 2019)

The center consolidates the strengths of Kyushu University to conduct research and development on flying vehicles and self-flying airplanes installed with electric propulsion systems in order to conserve the global environmental and reduce emissions from automated vehicles and airplanes that transport human and commercial cargo while working to create new related industries. It also trains individuals that can work in R&D and related industries.

Links

History

The ISEE’s predecessor, the Systems Information Science Research Department, strove to be a new type of organization for research and education that aimed to surpass existing organizational structures. It reorganized in April 1996 and integrated with faculty members from the departments of Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering and Computer Science and Communication Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering, the Department of Information Systems in the Graduate School of Engineering Sciences, the Research Institute of Fundamental Information Science attached to Faculty of Science, the Department of Physics in the Faculty of Science, the Faculty of Literature, the Faculty of Education. Established as an independent research facility, it was comprised of five departments: the Department of Informatics (5 full-time faculty and 5 associate faculty) , the Department of Intelligent Systems (9 full-time faculty and 9 associate faculty), the Department of Computer Science and Communication Engineering (9 full-time faculty and 9 associate faculty), the Department of Electrical and Electronic Systems Engineering (7 full-time faculty and 7 associate faculty), and the Department of Electronic Device Engineering (7 full-time faculty and 7 associate faculty). Faculty from the Computer Center, the Educational Center for Information Processing, and the Research Institute of Superconductor Science were simultaneously added as co-chairs. This reorganization was one of the initial actions in the “Graduate School Priority Program,” which adhered to the outline for reorganizing Kyushu University.

As a result, the ISEE was reorganized again in April 2000 into Graduate Faculty (5 divisions) and Graduate Schools (5 departments) following the introduction of the Kyushu Graduate Faculty and Graduate School Organization Guidelines. In April 1999, the Research Institute of Superconductor Science and Systems (RISS), which was attached to the previous Faculty of Engineering, joined the ISEE as a research institution and when the Graduate Faculty and Graduate School Organization Guidelines were introduced, it was decided that one department of this institute would be comprised of faculty members. Faculty of this institute would also oversee the teaching faculty for the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in the Faculty of Engineering and Physics and Information Courses in the Department of Physics, Faculty of Science.

Though the ISEE makes significant contributions to society as mentioned above, society and business put forth strong calls for reform to our graduate school’s educational system in order to respond to the rapidly changing needs of society, since it is responsible for the social infrastructure of information and energy. Additionally, ICT fields are becoming more sophisticated by the day, which points to the need to devise long-term career paths with industry-university collaborations that train industry-leading ICT technicians. In 2009, the ISEE reorganized the five departments above into three departments: the Department of Informatics, the Department of Advanced Information Technology, and the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. The ISEE was reorganized once more in 2021 into just two departments, the Department of Information Science and Technology and the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, to better provide graduate school education that responds to modern needs. The ISEE continues to actively create new academic domains in cooperation with the Graduate School of Systems Life Sciences (department) and the Graduate School of Integrated Frontier Science.

The university also established the Gigaphoton Next GLP Joint Research Department in 2011 and the Department of I&E Visionaries in 2012 based on new regulations in Kyushu University’s Strategic Reform Plan for Activation Program.