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President Hirofumi Makino, Dr. Kayo Takahashi, and Dr. Masaharu Seno unveiled the signboard
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Mr. Yutaka Takimoto delivered a congratulatory address
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The Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in Health Systems was established in April 2018

The Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in Health Systems was established in April 2018 as the eighth graduate school of Okayama University.

Under the theme of “health systems,” which deal with challenges in real-life healthcare situations, the Graduate School focuses on developing students’ problem-solving skills—they learn to use a cycle of identifying problems and their backgrounds, analyzing the problems, developing solutions, and then implementing the solutions to improve real-life situations in a scientific way. The Graduate School is the first in 13 years established by Okayama University.

Its signboard unveiling ceremony was held on April 5.The ceremony was attended by President Hirofumi Makino, Executive Director and Executive Vice President for Planning, Evaluation and General Affairs Dr. Kayo Takahashi, about 50 faculty and staff members, including Dean of the Graduate School Dr. Masaharu Seno, and about 80 master’s and doctoral course students (the very first students of the graduate school). At the ceremony, President Makino said, “It’s important for the University to establish graduate schools that can meet the demands of the times to promote necessary research.” Dr. Seno said, “Individual efforts and cooperation by all faculty and staff members and students are essential in making this graduate school perfectly unique and meaningful.”

On June 23, Okayama University held an event to celebrate the establishment of the Graduate School. The celebration event was attended by many people including local public officials and corporate representatives. Congratulatory speeches were made by Mr. Yutaka Takimoto, Deputy Director-General for Coordination between Upper Secondary Schools and Universities and Higher Education Bureau, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology; Dr. Stephen Lanier, Vice President for Research and Dr. Ahmad Ezzeddine, Associate Vice President for Educational Outreach and International Programs, both from Wayne State University in the U.S.; and Mr. Hisashi Matsuda, Chairperson of System Engineering Okayama and Former Chairperson of the Okayama Association of Corporate Executives. President Hirofumi Makino emphasized in his greeting how well the Graduate School matches the trends of the times. Subsequently, Dr. Masaharu Seno, Dean of the Graduate School, referred to various challenges of modern society, such as the aging population alongside the declining birthrate and deadlocked regional economies and explained the purpose of the Graduate School by saying, “We promote innovative education and research through collaborations between medicine and engineering and through the integration of arts and sciences, and develop students into excellent human resources capable of identifying problems, creating things and ideas that can solve the problems, and then putting them to actual use in society, thereby minimizing social challenges and contributing to everyone’s benefit.”

Further information
Okayama University (Japanese page)
http://www.okayama-u.ac.jp/tp/news/news_id7473.html http://www.okayama-u.ac.jp/tp/news/news_id7709.html


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