ISSP offers comprehensive graduate education (master and PhD courses) beyond conventional disciplinary fields such as physics, chemistry, engineering and biology.

Director's Message

The Institute for Solid State Physics (ISSP) is a national joint research institute dedicated to exploring materials science. We offer world leading research infrastructure, including extreme environments such as ultra high magnetic fields and ultra high pressures, advanced quantum beams—lasers, synchrotron radiation, and neutrons—and large scale supercomputers. Our research framework allows us to carry out the entire process from materials synthesis to processing and evaluation in a coherent and continuous manner. We also pursue diverse research in emerging areas of materials science, including surface science and biomaterials. Another distinctive feature of ISSP is the everyday interaction between theorists and experimentalists—in the Division of Condensed Matter Science, the Division of Condensed Matter Theory, and the Division of Nanoscale Science—where daily discussions naturally lead to new ideas. Such intellectual exchange is essential for scientific progress.

When you were born, Japan’s population was close to its peak at around 128 million. Eighty years from now, it is expected to fall into the 70 million range. Japan is already one of the most advanced population declining societies, and your lives will unfold within this reality, where social challenges will continue to grow. Meanwhile, the world population is projected to keep increasing for the next eighty years, making issues such as energy, food security, and the environment even more serious. In this situation, I encourage you to think carefully about what you choose to study in graduate school.

When I was a university student, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rapid spread of the internet occurred almost simultaneously, marking a time when the world became connected at unprecedented speed. Today, deep learning based AI is likely to bring about changes of similar scale. Although AI has advanced rapidly in the cyber world, we are now entering the era of Physical AI—a world in which systems observe physical reality, optimize actions through virtual simulations, and operate autonomously in real environments.

Japan’s demographic trends and AI are closely related. In countries with growing populations, people may worry that AI will take jobs. In contrast, Japan faces a severe labor shortage and therefore shows relatively little resistance to adopting AI. Moreover, Japan has strong capabilities in the hardware foundations of Physical AI—especially in materials science—and holds a significant share of semiconductor materials. Materials science will continue to play an essential role in supporting these developments.

As Physical AI advances, research styles will change significantly. We will be able to obtain large amounts of high quality experimental data, almost as if operating a supercomputer. Although AI development is currently centered on the U.S. West Coast, its tools are becoming rapidly commoditized. This means that a world in which data has the greatest value is approaching, and research itself will evolve accordingly.

With these broader contexts in mind, I hope you will reflect carefully and choose the path you wish to follow, as you take your next steps toward the future.

Director
KOBAYASHI, Yohei

Prospective students

Both master’s and doctoral courses offer enrollment in April and September each year. The admission schedule is described below. The admission schedule is described below.

Graduate school at ISSP consists of three schools: Graduate School of Science, Graduate School of Engineering, and Graduate School of Frontier Sciences. You need to pass the exam by one of these schools to purse study at ISSP. Please check the affiliation of your desired faculty in advance since the entrance examination schedule is different by each field.

The guidance session is held around the first Saturday of June every year, providing information for entrance examination and an opportunity to visiting laboratories and getting to know members of the laboratories at the social gathering.

Guidance Site

List of Departments in Graduate School

To study at ISSP, applicants need to enroll in one of the following graduate schools. Each graduate school holds a separate entrance examination, therefore applicants should contact their advisor before the application process begins.

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