Message from the Dean

Dean of the College

Tetsuya Sakurai

The College of Information Science has 54 full-year faculty members. Since every year we admit 80 undergraduate students, this means a rate of 1.5 students per professor. This highly qualified educational board allows us to offer courses on a wide variety of subjects, ranging from fundamental courses on Software Engineering, System Architecture, Networking and Security to application focused subjects such as Web Services, User Interfaces, Image and Sound Recognition, Super Computing, among others.

In this age, computing technologies change in a blindingly fast fashion. However, the basic theories and mind processes upon which these technologies are developed are by a large measure still the same. With this in mind, we focus on first impressing this basis to our students, and then teaching them the cutting edge, while keeping clear the connection between the new technologies and the fundamental computing concepts. In this way, instead of simply making students memorize tools and methods, we form professionals that are able to create new things and ideas by themselves.

In their last year, our undergraduate students are able to acquire hands-on knowledge on the latest technologies, by performing research together with researchers from our Computer Science and Risk Engineering graduate courses. Based on these experiences, 80% of the undergraduate class of 2011 elected to continue to our graduate schools. Since it is very common nowadays for students in the engineering fields to take a Master or PhD degree, graduate school opportunities have become an important point when choosing universities. Please check the web pages of our Computer Science and Risk Engineering courses.

When doing so, also see what kind of companies our alumni are currently working at. Besides jobs in information technology, our alumni hold positions in car and electronic makers, banks, TV broadcasters, and many other fields. In the so called "Tsukuba Science City", a large number of research institutes, such as the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA), the National Environmental Research Institute, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology and the Material Sciences Research Institute, maintain close ties with our university.

The Campus of our University is as large as 55 Tokyo Dome stadiums. About 4000 students live in the many dormitories. The campus itself is almost a mini city, with convenience stores, post offices, and even a Starbucks. Using the Tsukuba Express line, you can make the trip from Tsukuba to Tokyo within 45 minutes, and there are also buses that go straight from the campus to Tokyo station. All in all, Tsukuba is a charming university town with high quality of life, a large concentration of top-notch research institutions, and easy access to a large metropolis such as Tokyo.

So come help us create the future of information technology in the College of Information Science at the university of Tsukuba!