I have received some e-mail messages from some students who have interests in the position of research student and/or graduate student in our group. From communications with those students, I have been aware that some basic things should be shown on our website. This document is written for such a purpose.
For students who are interested in Ph.D. candidate positions, it should be noticed that Japanese Ph.D. students are not paid from laboratories. It means that they have to survive by themselves, and usually their parents have to pay their living costs. The situation is very different from that in Europe, the US, and China, in which generally Ph.D. students are paid from the supervisor.
There are some scholarship programs, but no guarantee. Apart from the life cost, the tuition fee is necessary as well, although the universities have a waiver and discount of the fee according to the economic situation of the student. On the other hand, the research money is, of course, paid from my research budget.
Some details for the admission are available here.
For students who wish to come to our group for the master course, in addition to the economic issues mentioned above, be aware of the entrance examination. The students in my group are in the Engineering school, and in the Department of Materials Physics, not in the polymer/chemistry department. Due to this situation, the subjects for the entrance exam for the master course is basically physics heading like quantum physics, electromagnetics, applied math, stat phys, etc, although the exam is somewhat different from that for Japanese students and the situations of foreign applicants would be considered.
Most of the cases, foreign students come to our Department as a research student in October for the preparation of the exam and take the exam in November. Then they will be the master course students from April if they pass the exam.
The other possible way to our group is to get to the Ph.D. course, rather than the master course. For such a case, as long as the research project during the Ph.D. course fits our direction, the entrance exam is not too much difficult, in general.
For students in the physics-related field, the subjects in our group may seem something chemistry and/or bio-related topics. They may be funny and/or even stupid. But you can enjoy it. I graduated from the Applied Physics Department and started studies for rheology and soft-matters in my undergrad project, and I found lots of fun.
For further information, please write to me.