On April 4, 2022, the 2022 Hokkaido University Ambitious Program for Smart Materials Science (hereafter, SMatS) recruitment ceremony was held in the large conference room of the main building of the School of Science of Science. This program is designed to train graduate students in the doctoral course not only to conduct research in their specialized fields, but also to develop smart materials science skills and the ability to implement them in society. Coordinator Tetsuya Taketsugi presented four program students with certificates.

Greetings from Coordinator Tetsuya Taketsugi

I would like to extend my heartfelt congratulations to all of you who have been adopted into the 2nd generation. All the faculty and staff members are very happy to have been able to accept a total of 4 students, 3 from the Graduate School of Chemical Sciences and Engineering Sciences and 1 from the School of Information Science and Technology and Technology. SMatS is Hokkaido University's unique program for students in the doctoral course of graduate school, and it just started in the 3rd year of Reiwa (2021).

In fact, in the 3rd year of Reiwa last year, various fellowship projects were launched from Hokkaido University. The Ambitious Fellowship has two fields: information/AI and SDGs, and the DX Doctoral Fellowship has started. Behind this is a sense of crisis about the decline in Japan's scientific and technological capabilities and the need to support the younger generation. Please think of SMatS as support from the aspect of education.

Now, I would like to talk about what kind of person you can become if you develop smart materials science skills. Hokkaido University's ICReDD may serve as a good example. ICReDD was selected as a World Premier International Research Center (WPI) in 2018, and Professor Benjamin List, one of the research institute members, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2021. ICReDD advocates the fusion of information science, computational science, and experimental science, so it is an attempt to accelerate the discovery of important chemical reactions, which used to take 100 years. This is a very challenging research.

On the other hand, although SMatS is an educational program, it cultivates the ability to handle mathematical science, computational science, and data science that ICReDD practices. In addition, various graduate students gather and develop cross-departmental education. Over the past year, the first-year students have worked on a DX project in collaboration with industry, academia, and government. For more information, please visit the Ph.Discover website. I think it will be very helpful from the perspective of interdisciplinary integration and industry-academia-government collaboration. Since SMatS is a doctoral program, we expect students to participate proactively rather than passively. I wish you all the best in your fight.

We asked one of the program students, Ms. Sae Uno.
—Please tell us your motivation for participating in SMatS this time.
Until now, I had never participated in a program outside of my field of study, but after hearing about SMatS's activities from my seniors and looking at the website, I wanted to experience various things other than research.
—Please tell us what you would like to try.
First, I would like to study a different field, such as computational science, which is not my specialty. Also, the activities of Furano City's DX project, which is a collaboration between industry, government, and academia, seems interesting, so I would like to participate.