Working at CiNet

We continually seek exceptional young researchers from across the globe, to join us as interns, graduate students, and post-doctoral fellows. What makes CiNet unique is that we give young scientists freedom and resources to tackle their own problems as early as possible, as part of an environment and culture that expects the brightest ideas from the most junior researchers. We also lack the traditional barriers between labs, with considerable intermixing, open discussion and substantive collaboration between the community of CiNet researchers.

There are number of ways in which you can apply to work with us. Whereas we typically expect a very high standard of intellectual achievement from prospective researchers, we place special emphasis on creativity, initiative, and independence of thinking. We are also strongly committed to supporting female researchers.

From time to time, we have open positions as advertised below. However if you are interested in working at CiNet we strongly advise you to approach labs that you would like to work in, and initiate a discussion about your ideas. Below are some of the general funding schemes available for individuals, but there are many other smaller topic-specific and country-specific schemes available.

Current vacancies:

Funding opportunities:

Undergraduates and interns
NICT offers internships on a competitive basis with institutions that NICT/CiNet has an MoU with. NICT MoUs are listed here, and CiNet specific MoUs can be found on the Research page. Undergraduate students can also be supported by the governments Monbu-kagaku-sho (MEXT) scholarship program. We also host many interns with funding from their own institution / country.

PhD studentships
PhD degrees are available through Osaka University. Although it has been the norm for Japanese PhD students to self-fund their doctoral research, there are number of competitive programs for the most talented graduate students:

  • JSPS offers doctoral fellowships to international students
  • The Humanware Innovation Program is a 5 year fully funded doctoral program for Japanese or international students. The program involves taught courses for the first two years, and progression depending on examination. Note that Japanese lectures are mandatory in the second year, so this may not be suitable for people trying to learn Japanese language from scratch at the outset.The application deadline is in late February each year
  • Monbu-kagaku-sho: MEXT scholarship program for overseas students
  • A number of countries have bilateral funding schemes. We advise checking details from individual embassies.

Post-doctoral positions
There are a number of competitive schemes run by the Japanese Society for promotion of Science (JSPS), that fully fund post-doctoral fellowships for overseas students. See here for more information. If you want to do a post-doc in one of our labs, the JSPS fellowships are an easy way to do this. Again, there are a number of country specific programs, information about which would usually be on that country’s embassy website.

In all cases, we recommend that prospective students and post-docs first make contact with one of the labs, who will then offer advice and help on funding.

Senior Scientists
We very much welcome more senior scientists wishing to undertake sabbaticals or visiting fellowships. There are many funding options available, so please contact us for more information.