About SDS

A New Kind of Graduate School

The School for Design & Science (SDS) at Chiba Institute of Technology is a global, antidisciplinary graduate program where students, faculty, and collaborators come together to explore—and redesign—the systems that shape our world.

We’re rethinking how graduate education works. Instead of rigid silos, fixed outcomes, or abstract theory, SDS offers a flexible, project-based learning environment grounded in real-world complexity, collaboration, and ethical imagination. Here, students don’t just study systems—they build them.

Global. Antidisciplinary.

SDS is taught entirely in English and open to students from any background, discipline, or country. Our community includes engineers and designers, scientists and artists, entrepreneurs and researchers. What brings us together is not what we studied, but what we’re curious about—and what we’re ready to build next.

Our program fosters meaningful collaboration across cultural and disciplinary boundaries. We invite students to bring their full intellectual and creative selves, and to work with faculty not just as students, but as partners in inquiry.

A Compass, Not a Map

We don’t believe in one-size-fits-all pathways. Instead, SDS offers tools, projects, and guidance that help you define your own direction. Our curriculum is flexible and emergent, driven by real problems and real collaborations.

Projects come first. Learning follows curiosity. Theory meets application in context—not in isolation. Whether you’re designing an incentive system, prototyping a new governance model, simulating cooperative intelligence, or exploring the ethics of emerging technology, SDS supports you with the structure to stay grounded and the freedom to explore.

Source: Neri Oxman’s Krebs Cycle of Creativity

Our Ethos

Our approach is inspired by ideas that challenge conventional education. At SDS, we value:

  • Resilience over strength
  • Pull over push
  • Risk over safety
  • Systems over objects
  • Compasses over maps
  • Practice over theory
  • Disobedience over compliance
  • Crowds over experts
  • Learning over education

These values are not rules—they’re reflections. They help us navigate complexity with clarity, humility, and purpose.

Built for Collaboration

SDS was founded by a team of antidisciplinary thinkers and makers—engineers, designers, legal scholars, speculative artists, and cognitive scientists. Many of us have worked across multiple domains and institutions, from MIT to Tokyo to Berlin. What unites us is a shared belief that meaningful impact starts with radical collaboration.

As a student at SDS, you’ll work closely with faculty to define projects, shape your learning, and build connections with others inside and outside the university. We see learning as a relationship, not a transaction.

Designed for Impact

SDS is a place to work on the things that matter most to you—and to others. You’ll have the freedom to define your own questions, the tools to explore them deeply, and a community to support you as you bring your ideas to life.

Whether your background is in government, architecture, machine learning, philosophy, performance, economics, or something that doesn’t fit a label—if you’re ready to learn by doing and lead by creating, SDS is ready for you.