NII invites international outstanding scientists to submit proposals for NII Shonan School, which aims to provide a series of advanced lectures for about 30 participants, who are mainly PhD students and young researches (and excellent master/bachelor students) on any topics of informatics. The NII Shonan School also aims to provide an excellent opportunity for the participants to build up, enhance and widen international collaboration network.

The proposal should clearly describe the contents of the lectures to be given at your NII Shonan School and benefits for the participants and should include the following items:

• Title of your NII Shonan School
• Information of organizers and their affiliation
  • Please submit 1-page CV for each of the organizers.

• Proposed dates for the NII Shonan School
  • Please suggest two or more candidate dates.

• Description of the NII Shonan School
  • Please explain what types of lectures you plan to provide at the NII Shonal School and why the lectures are important for the participants, who are mainly PhD students and young researchers (and excellent master/bachelor students), in English without using many technical jargons. 1-2 pages.

• Invited lecturers and their affiliation
  • Please submit 1-page CV for each of invited lecturers as well as the short abstract of the lectures to be given at the NII Shonan School. The number of invited lectures allowed are up-to-six.

• Additional budget for your NII Shonan School
  • If you have any other budget, which can be used for organizing your NSS better in addition to our small budget, please let us know its information.

• Expected travel itinerary of invited lectures and organizers:
  • (a) Departure/return date, (b) departure airport and preferable route to Tokyo, Japan and © estimated airfares for each of invited lectures and organizers. Please note that the total amount of flight airfares must be less than 1,000,000 JPY.

Sample Application Form

*NOTE: This is just for your reference.

Please submit your proposal form via Easy Chair.

We welcome your proposal anytime through a whole year. We have call-for-proposals twice a year, June 15th and December 15th. Notification of tentative acceptance will be announced just after about 2-3 months of each closing day. Academic Committee for the NII Shonan School will carefully review the proposal.

Organizers are required to approach, attract, and gather participants by themselves and submit a fixed list of the participants via Easy Chair within 3 months after the organizers received the tentative accept. The committees will inform the final results of the school after the participant list is confirmed.

The list should have a good balance of the participants, such as international diversity and variety of institutions/universities. Mandatory items of the list are:
1 ) title, 2 ) first name, 3 ) middle name, 4 ) last name, 5 ) affiliation, 6 ) email, 7 ) country, and 8 ) research interest. 

The optimal number of participants is between 25 and 35 participants, including the organizers and invited lecturers. If the number of the participants is too small, the school may be cancelled.

Once your proposal is formally approved, NII office help and assist organizers and invited lectures for administrative works.

See enlarged image

The aim and styles of the NII Shonan School is similar to those of so-called summer/winter schools for PhD student in which multiple lectures and hands-on sessions are given by internationally recognized scientists as well as short presentations by the participants. The organizers can decide detailed theme and contents of each of NII Shonan School by themselves.

NII Shonan School is normally held for five days, from Monday to Friday. The check-in date is Sunday evening and the check-out date is Friday after lunch. Wednesday afternoon can be used for mini-breaks such as hiking, hill-walking, or an excursion to Kamakura, a historical city nearby. 

Standard time table

*If something is to be changed, please inform the office of NII Shonan Meetings in advance.

Each NII Shonan School is led by two organizers. One organizer should be from Asian institutes or universities and preferably they are from different affiliations. The organizers may have talks at the NII Shonan School in addition to invited lectures.

The NII Shonan school will be held at the Shonan Village Center (near Tokyo), which can be directly accessed by train from Narita airport. For the detail of the venue, please see here.

The Shonan Village Center sends out an email approximately 6 weeks in advance to the NII Shonan School to those whose name is on the list of participants, in which the reservation form for their accommodations and detailed travel information are included.

In order to organize the school smoothly, a short pre-meeting with the staffs of NII Shonan School will be held on the arriving day of the organizers.

The center is well equipped with the rooms for free discussions after dinner. Some drinks and snacks are provided at “Exhibition room” of the 1st floor of “Research Wing”.

The Wednesday afternoon of the NII Shonan School may be used for mini-breaks such as hiking, hill-walking, and an excursion to Kamakura, a historical city nearby. Bilingual professional guides at the Shonan Village Center, who know history or local information well, accompany the party to an excursion for the historical sites. For the tour, a micro-bus is chartered. Each participant is asked to pay about 5,000 JPY for the excursion.

Wireless LAN is well covered for all seminar rooms and each floor of the Shonan Village Center. Each participant’s guest room is equipped with wired-LAN. The cables can be borrowed at the reception.

The organizers are requested to submit a report after their meeting or school.

Regular participation fees are paid in advance when each participant reserves his/her accommodation via Shonan Village Center web page. 

Regular fee for participant: JPY 12,500 per night

*The above fee does not include excursion. We would ask each participant (including organizers and lecturers) to pay excursion fees in addition. Participants are expected to stay at the Center throughout and to attend the full meeting and excursion. The payment would be made together with accommodation reservation.

Flight expenses for invited lecturers are covered and paid by NII according to NII regulations (economy, return ticket). The total expenses for all the lecturers’ flights have to be below 1,000,000 JPY, which is the maximum travel budget allowed for each of the NII Shonan School (It is possible to use this budget for organizers’ flights as well). Even if the total travel expenses are less than the maximum travel budget, the organizers cannot use the rest of the travel expenses for other purposes.

Regarding the flight tickets and the itineraries, our budget has several constrains below, which you need to pay attention and to understand: 

1) NII will pay airfares for the invited lecturers. However the departure and return dates have to be exactly before and after the Shonan School starts and ends. The invited lectures cannot extend their stay as long as they use our travel budget.

2) NII will purchase the flight tickets for the invited lectures once the submitted proposal is accepted. Please do not purchase the flight tickets by yourself.

3) The flight route from the country where the invited lectures leave to Tokyo must be direct or shortest if the direct flights do not exit. They cannot drop by and stay at any other countries. 

4) NII can pay airfares only for a round-trip ticket of an economy seat. NII cannot pay the flight expenses for one-way tickets and cannot reimburse the flight tickets purchased by other travel agency.

5) NII cannot partially pay for any flight tickets.

The travel expenses for organizers will NOT be paid by NII (however it is possible to use the budget of lecturers’ flights (1,000,000 JPY) for organizers’ flights as well. In that case, it is also required to follow the above regulations about using the budget).

The travel expenses for any participants (PhD students/ young researchers/ excellent master and bachelor students) will NOT be paid by NII.

Accommodation fees for organizers are covered by NII. Those fees for invited lecturers are also covered by NII. Fee for participants is NOT be covered by NII and we will ask each of the participants to pay for their accommodation fees, which include full board (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) and sharing a twin room.

A small amount of honorarium may be optionally paid to the invited lectures and it will be covered by NII. However, please bear in mind that the amount of honorarium for the lecturers is fixed regardless of the number of lectures and its duration. Please also note that organizers cannot receive the honorarium even if they give lecture(s) at NII Shonan School.

NII will cover participation fees of 2 brilliant students. Organizers can recommend up to 2 participants for the best student award when organizers submit the participant list. Academic Committee will assess and evaluate the students based on the letter of recommendation from organizers, and inform the result with the information of final review of the proposal. Please note that this award will not cover their travel expenses.

A Shonan Village Center staff will take a group photograph.