7 G-cube students joined the 3rd Student Meeting of Leading Graduated Schools held at Hokkaido University during June 20-21, 2015.

All other participating programs besides GRIPS were in the area of natural science.  The difficulty in communicating and debating common issues with researchers from other academic disciplines became painfully apparent during discussions in workshops, where their ways of thinking differed and the same terminology often meant different things.  At the same time, one student commented that since they will likely be required to work with such researchers and practitioners from different backgrounds in the future, the meeting gave them a clear task ahead for them: how to bridge such communication gaps between different disciplines.

Thus the meeting was an opportunity not just for gaining knowledge and exchanging information, but for getting empirical experience in communicating with others from different specialties, and the students seem to have found it very stimulating.