For Prospective Students

Our mission is to produce researchers and developers who can exercise leadership in research and development in the fields of computer technologies.
We are always welcoming highly-motivated students who want to become such researchers or developers.

Affiliations

High Performance Computing Laboratory (Graduate School)

Department of Computer and Mathematical Sciences, Graduate School of Information Sciences, Tohoku University.

Entrance Exams are held twice a year (Fall and Spring Examinations)
Our lab is in Subject Group 3 (Mechanical Engineering). Applicants may also select the written exams of other Subject Groups to enter our lab.
Please refer to the guide of entrance examinations.

 

Takizawa Laboratory (Undergraduate School)

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, School of Engineering, Tohoku University.

Students of our department are assigned to laboratories in May or June of the 3rd year.

 

About Our Laboratory

Life in Our Laboratory
  • The communication in our lab is mainly done on Slack and/or emails for almost all topics from casual conversations to serious research discussions (though printed documents are sometimes sent from the school office). Of course, we will have a face-to-face meeting if necessary.
  • There is no core time. Lab members can work on their research on a flexible schedule. Some are almost always in the laboratory, and others are mostly online. Essentially, laboratory members are required to attend two kinds of laboratory seminars (“global” and “local”).
    • Yet, it is recommended for students to come to the laboratory so as to clearly differentiate the working and private hours, and also to develop their leadership as senior students.
    • Our lab is in the Cyberscience Center main building nearby the Aobayama subway station. Leverage vending machines are available in the building. There are several cafeterias and convenience stores within the walking distance.
  • Graduate students and 4th-year undergraduate students are required to attend a laboratory seminar (also called a global seminar) every week. Undergraduate students are supposed to report the research progress once in two months. Graduates are supposed to give a talk every month.
  • In addition to the global seminar, students are supposed to attend a local seminar every week. The local seminar is basically led by senior students. Students interested in similar research topics can freely join it for exchanging ideas and sharing information as well as progress report, while professors may not attend it depending on their schedules.
Research
  • “Research” is to tackle solving an unsolved problem, for which no one knows the correct answer yet. Professors will give an advice on your research but even they may not know the correct answer. Namely, professors are not the persons who are expected to know the correct answers, such as high-school teachers. Regarding the research, a professor is just a partner of each student tackling the unsolved problem together, not a boss for students. Students and professors are equals upon research discussions. Professors will share the joy with students at a success, and also think together about students’ research directions at facing difficulties.
  • The true value of any research project would not be recognized correctly, unless it is explained properly. Thus, the importance of logical thinking and technical writing is emphasized in the laboratory activities. Some of students might not need the knowledge about computer science after the graduation, but we believe all of them will need the logical thinking and technical writing skills even more in the future.
  • It is generally difficult for undergraduates to consider their research themes by themselves. So, they select and work on their research themes from the candidates given by professors. Their expected goal is to make an oral or poster presentation at the external workshop.
  • Master course students extend their undergraduate research projects, or start new projects found by themselves during the undergraduate research. At the graduate school, a student is not a simple worker who just follows professors’ directions. Rather graduate students are expected to do something creative, thinking what they should do. By doing this, they can enjoy the research activities, and often become more familiar with a particular research topic than professors. Their expected goal is to publish a reviewed paper about the research project.
  • A doctor course student is expected to become an independent researcher who can conduct a research project with having firm expertise. In the research community, the student should be recognized as an expert of a particular research area, and must be more familiar with the area than professors. In the research area, the student is expected to be capable of considering an interesting research topic and conducting the research on it. Their expected goal is to publish at least three fully-reviewed papers including at least one journal paper.
Facilities and Expenses
  • A working space (desk) is provided to each of graduate students and 4th-year undergraduate students.
  • A display monitor is also provided on each desk, assuming a student has her/his own laptop PC. A laptop PC of the lab can be provided if necessary.
  • Computing resources of software and hardware necessary for research are provided, including computing servers equipped with the latest GPU and FPGA devices. Usually, those resources are shared by all the laboratory members unless there is a special reason. In addition, Supercomputer AOBA installed at the Cyberscience Center is available to laboratory members.
  • Students (especially graduate students) are expected to attend international conferences for presentation. All the travel expenses and publication fees are covered by the laboratory.
Training Programs
  • Undergraduate students are assigned to our lab when they are 3rd-year students. Until the assignment, they have mostly taken classes about mechanical engineering, and are not necessarily familiar with computer technologies at the assignment. So, our lab provides (and is enhancing) a plenty of introductory materials for new members to learn how to use mandatory software tools as well as the basic knowledge about computers.
  • Right after the laboratory assignment, the new members will join “study sessions” provided by senior students to learn the basic software tools and the minimum mandatory knowledge about computers.
  • At the beginning of the 4th-year undergraduate study, special seminars called “Hennessy and Paterson seminars” are held so that students can learn the knowledge about the computer architecture, which will be required for the research on high performance computing. The seminars are held in collaboration with Computer Architecture Lab (aka Kobayashi-Sato Lab).
  • “Laboratory Skill Map” summarizes the beginner, intermediate, and advanced skills for students to by themselves check if they have obtained those skills. Students will obtain the beginner and intermediate skills at the student sessions mentioned above. For obtaining the advanced skills, each student will setup a computing system, and try doing some concrete tasks such as programming, performance evaluation, and documentation, using the system. The Laboratory Skill Map assumes self-learning with help of senior students.
  • For new graduate students, based on their knowledge levels and skills at the entrance, professors will consider if they join the above programs.

The introduction video of our laboratory

Jobs of graduates

Doctor course

TOSHIBA CORPORATION
Hitachi, Ltd.
NEC Corporation
Ministry of Defense
Renesas Electronics
Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.
Nomura Securities Co., Ltd.
Tohoku University
Henan University of Science and Technology

Master course

NIPPON TELEGRAPH AND TELEPHONE EAST CORPORATION
NTT DATA Corporation
NS Solutions Corporation
All Nippon Airways Co., Ltd.
FANUC Corporation
TOSHIBA CORPORATION
TOSHIBA TEC CORPORATION
Nomura Research Institute, Ltd.
Microsoft
Ministry of Defense
Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd.
NEC Corporation
Rakuten, Inc.
Seiko Epson Corporation
SoftBank Corp.
Fujitsu Limited
NTT COMWARE Corporation
Mizuho Information & Research Institute, Inc.
LIFULL CO.,Ltd.
Internet Initiative Japan Inc.(IIJ)
Advantest Corporation
KELK Ltd.
Baidu
FUJIFILM Business Innovation Corp.