Kyoto University – The Hakubi Project

The Hakubi Center (Young Researcher Development Center) was established in September 2009 to provide an institutional home for the development and implementation of the Hakubi Project to Foster and Support Young Researchers. As the home institution, the Center currently supports the research activities of the first 17 Hakubi researchers (6 Associate Professors, 11 Assistant Professors) who joined Kyoto University in April 2010, and promotes the coordination with host institutions in Kyoto University, in which the Hakubi researchers conduct their individual research activities.

The Hakubi Project was conceived by Kyoto University as a mechanism for supporting world-class researchers identified as intellectual leaders of the future. In this age of fierce competition, every university strives to attract outstanding individual researchers, but this project was not designed with the intent of retaining human resources for Kyoto University. Rather, the project draws on Kyoto University’s approach to integrated and multi-disciplinary science, providing wings to researchers who will forge new paths in global academic research that pay no heed to disciplinary or geographic boundaries. The Hakubi Center provides a space to realize this ambition.

The Hakubi Project welcomes applications from researchers all over the world without consideration of the applicant’s nationality. It is open to any young researcher holding a doctoral degree (or equivalent research abilities) in any range of basic and applied studies in all academic fields, from the humanities to the social and natural sciences. Under this project, Kyoto University selects and employs at most twenty Hakubi researchers as program-specific faculty members (associate professor or assistant professor) each year.

The call for applications is open and international. Hakubi researchers are selected on the basis of comprehensive evaluation of their past research and research proposal, as well as their prospects for assuming a position of leadership in the next generation of researchers. An Expert Committee, comprising Kyoto University professors selected in accordance with their respective fields of studies, screens application documents (the first screening). The Hakuraku Council, consisting of influential internal and external intellectuals, interviews the candidates selected by the Expert Committee (the second screening). In the final stage of the screening process, the Steering Committee appoints in the range of, but no more than, twenty researchers each year.

Hakubi researchers are employed by Kyoto University as program-specific faculty members with the rank of Associate Professor or Assistant Professor. They are engaged in research for a period of five years at their host institution (faculty, graduate school, institute or research center), chosen in accordance with their field of studies. The Center supports researchers in various ways so that they can effectively pursue their research activities in collaboration with their host institutions and professors.

Application deadline: May 8, 2012.

Application instructions and online application forms: http://www.hakubi.kyoto-u.ac.jp/eng/04_rec/index.html

For further information visit the project's website: http://www.hakubi.kyoto-u.ac.jp/eng/index.html