In the July Plenary Meeting, reports on the Global Challenge II, and the orientation session for the Industry-academia collaboration Ideathon / Hackathon Program were held.

Here is a short summary of the topics discussed:

Global Challenge II

In the Global Challenge II, students visit a top-tier international research institution. While participating in competitive research, they can practice communication and interaction with international researchers. This time, one student reported on his experience during the Global Challenge II.

Mr. Adachi learned about urban problems and suburbanization taking place in many countries (the so-called "doughnut phenomenon".) During this, he could experience working in state-of-the-art research facilities, and see what kind of daily life students and researchers from Europe have, analyzing the Global Challenge II experience from three axes. During the three months, he mentioned that he could gain experience in each of these points and that he became more interested in the topic suburbanization.

The student, who attended Global Challenge II, and their visiting research institute are as follows:

Industry-academia collaboration Ideathon / Hackathon Program

In the Industry-academia collaboration Ideathon/Hackathon program, affiliated enterprises provide AI-, IoT- or BigData-related problems and topics for groups of students to solve. Multiple ambitious groups of graduate students compete to brainstorm novel ideas and business models for conquering these issues.

In this Ideathon / Hackathon program, which is the first this year, a company provided us with a real-world problem setting. Students were divided into four groups, each brainstorming towards various ideas to solve the company's problem. After the brainstorming session, each group presented their ideas. Going forward, each group will work on the project, which will conclude in the September Plenary Meeting.