For successful completion of the Leader’s Program, students need to pass two tests collectively called “Qualifying Examination (QE).” In 2015, 19 first-term students (second-year master’s students) took on the first challenge of “QE1.” The main task, which remained the same as that in the previous year, was to compile a review or research proposal on either a cross-disciplinary study or a collaboration between mathematics and sciences. This test aimed to evaluate the level of students’ comprehensive perspective as a result of participation in independent curricula such as “Interdisciplinary Lab Visits” and “Frontier Mathematical Sciences I, II,” which were specifically designed for the program. 

This program’s faculties as well as researchers from collaborating corporations acted as examiners in the oral test. One examiner from the research institute of a major corporation said that he/she was “astonished at the sheer amount of intriguing presentations. These students had proved that they were able to canvass the research trend of an entirely different field in a very short period of time.” The examiner further elaborated that “researchers in corporate laboratories not only need to be motivated in a wide range of disciplines but must also be equipped with mathematical analytic skills.” In this regard, the examiner believes the QE of this program is “extremely noteworthy” as it focuses especially on interdisciplinary study and mathematics–sciences collaboration. Moreover, a student who wrote on the topic of cross-disciplinary fusion thought that “the greatest reward of taking QE1 was that it erased my initial resistance in reading articles from different fields.”