In order to solve various issues related to health systems (the people and systems that consist of medical and nursing care places) that are expected to arise in a super-aging society which humanity has never experienced, aiming to promote education and research that organically links the fields of medicine, humanities and social sciences, and engineering, our school was established as the eighth graduate school of Okayama University and four years have passed.

The educational goal of our school is to cultivate the human talent necessary for innovation in industrial production and/or social systems. This is done through collaboration with specialists in various fields based on a deep understanding of the problems and future directions of human societies, especially in the fields of medicine and welfare, while creating/applying academic findings. Education at our school focuses on fostering the abilities necessary to drive an innovation cycle that “extracts” and “organizes” problems (issue discovery) and their backgrounds in actual systems (elements and their interactions) for the health and happiness of humans. It also, “assigns” subjects to be solved (assignment settings) by analyzing actual problems, “creates” novel ideas and artifacts (solution creation), and “adapts” them to actual settings (solution application), resulting in an “improving” of the actual settings.

To achieve its educational goal, our school performs unique educational activities based on a new academic field termed “interdisciplinary science.” Students will learn viewpoints, methodologies, and academic methods in the fields of medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, health science, engineering and the humanities and social sciences by taking various lecture subjects. They will also experience the extraction and assignment of problems and the creation and application of solutions through practical training and implementation. Through this education program, students will grow to become advanced specialists capable of creating novel technologies and systems that will support the future development of human society. Furthermore, they will work to implement these technologies and systems through social innovations in the fields of medicine and health sciences.

Students graduating from our school will earn the degree of “Master of Science in Interdisciplinary Studies” in the master course and the degree of “Doctor of Philosophy” in the doctorate course. This is the first time in Japan that the term “interdisciplinary studies” has been permitted by the national government to be used in the name of an academic degree. I believe that the education and research of our school, which are characterized by collaborations in medicine and engineering and the integration of arts and sciences, are novel and timely ventures for human societies as they become increasingly aged. Moreover, this education and research will contribute to the development of the professional talent necessary to achieve the sustainable development goals (SDGs) proposed by the United Nations and promoted at Okayama University. Our school will contribute to the development of regional partnerships and collaborations between industry and academia by utilizing the above-mentioned features, while strengthening mutually beneficial international collaborations with foreign Universities and research institutes. It will also actively work to dispatch students to other institutions, welcome international students and carry out joint research. As students, I hope you will develop into the advanced professional talent that will pioneer the future of human societies by pursuing the new academic field of “interdisciplinary science” with us.

April 1, 2022