Event Report

The "SynFOSTER 2016" Symposium on Nurturing Young Talent was held at Hokkaido University Conference Hall on Thursday, January 28, 2016.

The purpose of this symposium is to bring together all the people in charge of human resource development initiatives at our university, deepening their understanding and collaboration among these initiatives, and to promote Hokkaido University 's human resource development activities both inside and outside the university. This symposium has been held continuously since 2008, and this year marks the eighth time it has been held.

The symposium, which was held under the theme of "Globalization of Doctoral Career Development Platforms," began with an opening address from President Yamaguchi. In the first part, Mr. Yasuyoshi Kakida, Director of the Human Resources Policy Division, Science and Technology Policy Bureau, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, spoke about "The Current Situation Surrounding Doctoral Human Resources and the Future Direction of Policy." Next, Mr. Greg Story, Representative Director of Dale Carnegie Training Japan, spoke from his perspective as someone who has been educating the executive personnel required by companies for many years, about the transferable skills that are essential for Japanese and foreign doctoral human resources to be active globally. Finally, Mr. Akio Baba, Special Advisor to the President and Specially Appointed Professor at the Office of Industrial and Academic Collaboration, Osaka University, gave a keynote speech titled "Doctoral Career Development through Collaboration with Society and Business."

In the second part, Professor Tsuneko Mochizuki, Director Front Office for Human Resource Education and Development gave a speech entitled "Towards the Globalization of the Doctoral Human Resource Development Platform." She introduced the university's efforts to build a new platform that builds on the career development support programs that the university has built up to date, mainly for Japanese doctorates and foreign doctorates who are fluent in Japanese, and that aims to provide new career programs for foreign doctoral students who are not fluent in Japanese, as well as to add functions to support Japanese doctorates in going abroad.

In the third part, in addition to the keynote speakers from the first part, a panel discussion was held based on the theme of the symposium, with valuable opinions from each of the following speakers joining the group: Dr. Tao Huirong, Director of Dr. Tao Clinic; Mr. Tsuji Satoshi of IBM Japan; Ms. Song Yeon, who completed our university's human resources development program and is Doctoral course working at Toshiba Corporation; Ms. Natalia Shmakova of our university's Engineering International Student Advice Office; and Mr. Abhijeet Rawankar, a doctoral student in the Graduate School of Engineering at our university.

This symposium was attended by participants from Tohoku University, the University of Tokyo, Shizuoka University, and others, and was a great success, making a significant contribution to the construction of our university's unique, consistent human resource development system. We would like to once again express our gratitude in writing to everyone who provided their consideration and cooperation in holding this symposium.