Kobe Institute of Computing

Kobe Institute of Computing (KIC), Graduate School of Information Technology, is just a short walk from Sannomiya Station in the center of Kobe's beautiful city. KIC introduces a program to produce 'work-ready' professional IT personnel who will be prepared for professional roles in the IT industry regardless of their previous field of education or previous work experience. The program curriculum is progressively structured in a way that proceeds from foundations to application & practice.

Is it for yourself in order to make your living? That is fine, but we believe you could achieve much more than that. KIC's motto is "Social Innovation by ICT and yourself," which means you develop ideas for solving issues in your society utilizing ICT and take leadership in implementing these solutions for your community, for your country, for society as a whole. We believe technology should be used for social good, not for evil.

In order to achieve this, every KIC student learns "Tankyu Practice," our original method to find issues, come up with solution ideas, and improve the ideas through verification processes. Students from 64 countries have learned this method and found it very useful. By learning Tankyu Practice, you are more likely to succeed in your projects.

KIC has more international students than local Japanese students, which is unique as a Japanese university. Highly motivated and talented students from various countries learn from each other and our experienced faculty members.

We foster highly motivated individuals who can work in various fields, including engineers developing software, building information & communication networks, creating embedded software, and constructing and designing various information systems. KIC graduates can develop management as IT architects and project managers and contribute to international cooperation & social development through information communication technology (ICT).

Our Two Targets for Student's Training:

• Professionals who can provide technical solutions to social issues by designing and maintaining new systems using their ICT skills.
• Highly insightful experts who can demonstrate leadership in problem-solving practice, with the cooperation of ICT technicians.

Students develop their skills through 'ICT' based subjects and 'Social Development and Innovator System' subjects. Students can combine the knowledge and skills through these subjects and apply them to the TANKYU Practice and Specific Themed Research, which lies at the university's heart. For each of the Specific Theme Research issues, students are required to build and verify a hypothesis for providing new value using ICT technology. The students will also perform a thorough investigation and discuss the results and implications.

On top of this, students will confirm the uniqueness of their solution by investigating similar solutions and verifying the possibility of realization by investigating income/expense balance through cost simulation. The student's findings are completed as an action plan and written up as a master's thesis.

Our faculty consists of experienced corporate pioneers from companies such as SONY and Panasonic to develop skilled professionals. They cooperate with various researchers and education experts to instill practical capabilities through group work and simulated projects.

For challenges in the real world, various factors complicate progress, and for such problems, you need to have the power to discover their essence. In the curriculum of KIC, you will develop this power through "TANKYU Practice" exercises and "Specific Theme Research."

By taking ICT and social development-related lectures and solving actual issues besides government-sponsored students from developing countries, it is possible to learn about international cooperation, social development, and social innovation.

KIC is actively developing academic agreements and cooperation with various institutions both in Japan and overseas, to create a rich educational environment that promotes developing advanced ICT human resources, which can be successful internationally.