Message / Management Structure

Message

Atsushi ASHIDA, Professor
Program Coordinator

It is easy to imagine that society as a whole, including the industrial structure, will undergo profound changes in the coming era, when Gen Z, who were born around the turn of the century, and the later Gen α, assume responsibility for running our world. However, what no one can predict is what these changes will be, nor when or how they will happen. What we can say for certain is that the people who will drive this change will come from Gen Z and Gen α. Further, if we are to continue moving forward in the coming era and realize peace and prosperity for humanity, we will need Gen Z and Gen α to produce true global leaders - the more the better - who can foster innovation on a global scale.

These generations are complete digital natives who viscerally understand that the tangible “things” we manipulate physically are nothing more than tools or instruments for bringing us the intangible “values” that actually drive human behavior. They are also fundamentally different from the generations before them in that they intuitively embrace both a specialized mindset for specialized fields and a meta-mindset for comprehensive thinking  from a bird's eye view about what is real and what is virtual. The students from Gen Z and Gen α who go on to pursue doctoral degrees in graduate school are truly valuable human resources, and should be leaders of the new era. However, if we continue with a research-oriented mindset that tends towards the acquisition of ever narrower and more specialized knowledge, we may increasingly lose sight of multidisciplinary approaches that go beyond the confines of any one specific discipline in order to look at the world holistically, identify challenges and figure out when and how they should be addressed. This would result in a weakening of the natural ‘meta’-mindedness of Gen Z and Gen α and cause them to fall into the same thinking as the prior generation, thereby likely hindering the cultivation of the qualities that will be needed in future leaders.

The “Graduate Course for System-inspired Leaders in Multidisciplinary Science (SiMS)” seeks to develop “system-inspired leaders in multidisciplinary science” who not only have high-level, specialized knowledge and research promotion skills but also can design and create “values” to solve problems through systems thinking from scientific, technological and societal factors by identifying issues across a range of disciplines and industry fields from an interdisciplinary perspective. In order to achieve this, we take full advantage of our academic diversity as a comprehensive university, the initiatives rooted in the local community which we engage in as a public university, and the educational and research activities which we pursue at the global level, as well as undertake industry-government-academia co-creation education efforts that provide students with guidance and mentoring from professionals outside of the university, all of which we use to foster global leaders capable of building “living” links between basic research and the development of practical applications within the world of industry.

The Program for Leading Graduate Schools  was established by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) with the aim of promoting the development of graduate schools worthy of being considered top educational institutions, and, in the 2013 academic year, the SiMS program was chosen to be a leading program which would be jointly run by Osaka Prefecture University and Osaka City University. For the first seven years the program was operated with assistance from the JSPS, after which it was operated by the two universities jointly and, now, as an independent program run by Osaka Metropolitan University, with the vast majority of those who have completed the program going on to careers in the world of industry.

SiMS is a joint industry-academia leader development program open to students who not only want to hone their professional research skills but, at the same time, desire to be global leaders with a broad vision and the ability to use research results to drive industrial innovation. It is our hope that, as participants pursue research activities in their specific academic disciplines, they will make use of the one-on-one guidance provided by the industry professionals who will serve as mentors and, through friendly competition with other participants from a diverse range of specializations and discussion with leaders in various fields, cultivate their capacity for big-picture, interdisciplinary thinking, enabling them to succeed in the world of industry as high-level, Ph.D. professionals, or, in other words, that they will use this opportunity to forge a path to becoming true global leaders.

Management Structure

SiMS Management Committee (as of April.2022)

SiMS Support Office

＊(N)Nakamozu Campus, (S）Sugimoto Campus