If you feel like you can develop far more capabilities than you have now, don’t confine yourself into a small lab. WIDE Project, connecting top research universities in Japan both technically and socially, welcomes self-motivated researchers with diverse opportunities for creative legwork, colorful multilingual interactions, and deep technical dive into large-scale testbeds.
WIDE GRIP is a global research internship program provided by WIDE Project and its member research institutes and corporations. WIDE Project, standing for Widely Integrated Distributed Environment, has been leading the Internet studies and operations in Japan and internationally, since 1985. You will participate in the cutting-edge studies of the Internet under the supervision of those faculty members of the research institutes who have driven the research fields, along with collaboration opportunities with corporations that co-creates the Internet.
Members of WIDE Project are working on variety of topics related to the Internet as outlined below:
• Internet technology
Technology has always been the strongest asset of WIDE Project. Ongoing research subjects include routing, mobility, wireless communication, transport protocols, name system protocols, virtual network, overlay network, security, measurement, network management, real-space applications, cloud technology, hardware acceleration and quantum networking.
• Internet and society
Because the Internet has become one of the infrastructures on which people depend their lives, social impacts of the technology offer another set of research questions in which WIDE Project is interested. Such research subjects include cyber laws, education and children, medical informatics, post-disaster recovery and e-government.
i) An undergraduate degree should have been completed, with work on a Master degree or Doctoral degree in progress. Applicants should therefore be enrolled in a recognized university course of study in fields related to the scope of WIDE Project (including Internet technology, Internet and society) at the time of application and during the entire period of internship.
ii) Applicants should be able to work in English. Applicants pursuing their studies in countries where higher education is not divided into undergraduate and postgraduate stages should have completed at least four years of study and be a student at the time of application and during the internship.
Interns are not financially remunerated by the WIDE Project. Costs and arrangements for travel, visas, accommodation and living expenses are the responsibility of the intern or his/her sponsoring institution.
WIDE Project accepts no responsibility for medical insurance for the intern or for any costs arising from accidents and/or illness during the internship period. Applicants are required to provide evidence of adequate medical insurance coverage.
WIDE Project is not responsible for any claims by an intern or third party in the case of loss or damage to property, or death or personal injury as a result of actions or omissions on the part of the intern during the internship period.
The deadline for receipt of of applications is generally around 3 months before the start of the internship period. For instance, the following deadlines may apply. Depending on your sponsoring institution and visa requirements, you may want to start planning earlier.
Applications from prospective interns may be forwarded by e-mail or normal mail directly, or through a sponsoring institution to:
Applications should include the following:
Participants will be accommodated at one of the following member institutions, depending on his/her research interest. Here at WIDE Project you will find that major research universities are actually interoperable pieces complementing with each other, not just competing with each other. You will also observe strong participation from broad array of multi-national companies in workshops and retreats.
Members of the following institutions, listed in alphabetical order, will either accommodate or collaborate with participants:
Thomas Silverston
Associate Professor
Université de Lorraine
Inria - Nancy
I am involved within WIDE Project since 2006 when I have been doing an internship during my PhD at Prof. Esaki lab, director of the WIDE Project. I joined WIDE camp and research meetings and I was participating mostly to the measurement research area. I could have meet senior researchers and discuss research topics related to network measurement and improve my skills about large-scale measurement experiments and traffic analysis.
After my PhD, in 2009, I become a post-doc researcher (JSPS) at the same laboratory and become an official WIDE member. In this context, I studied more deeply sensor networks, by focusing on the data collected through the live-e! Project from the University of Tokyo and its analysis. Then during my stay in todai I have focus on two topics one about network measurement for my PhD and the other one to study different topic from my past research (sensor networks).
WIDE Project was for me the fist experiment to start collaborating beyond my PhD lab. It was a great opportunity for me to meet senior researchers and discuss deeply about research. It s also a chance to be involved in such a community all around Japan, meeting professors and students from other cities, and sharing information about research. Attending WIDE camp was clearly a good opportunity as “educating students” for research. Indeed, it is organized exactly such as a conference or IETF meeting where parallels sessions take place, discussions, meeting people etc. As it is also a place where people become quickly familiar together, it is very easy to take part of the huge community.
While I am doing a research in WIDE Project, I have got a lot of supports from WIDE Project. They are large and can be various: from the opportunity to discuss frequently with world-class senior researchers, to the use of resources to setup new experiments at large-scale or topics. As "not material" support, WIDE Project give me the opportunity to interact within a huge research community. It is always welcome to attend a WIDE camp with a new idea, share with people and starting collaborations with people from different institution in Japan. Such collaborations with different partners would have take long time to set up but would be accelerated thanks to WIDE Project. Moreover, WIDE Project is supporting especially young research students to attend these camp and exchange topics, presenting and discussing, which is of important matter important for the education of students.
For students who think about studying in Japan, I recommend you to be involved in WIDE Project. It is like discovering professional research world in a context much easier to access. Then students should really attend and aim at discussing with any other people, about his research and possibility of joint work or collaborations. It is great opportunity to improve work and share new idea with people. In addition for foreign students, it is a good place to be involved with real Japanese people, get used to their way of working, improving and learning a new language and facing a different and fascinating culture.
Lecturer and Director of ICT Center
University of Hasanuddin, Indonesia
When I was conducting PhD study in Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST) for 3 years, I was doing a research on wireless/mobile networking. During my study, I did not only get a lot of advanced knowledge and academic experiences but I also got the practical/professional skills in the field of networking. Since NAIST is one of the university that has a significant contribution to Asian Internet Interconnection Initiatives (AI3) project, which is part of WIDE Project, my advisor, Prof. Suguru Yamaguchi encouraged me to involve in this project in order to obtain more practical skills in networking field. My role in this project was maintaining and upgrading the Mail, DNS, WWW Server of AI3 in NAIST-NOC. During my involvement in this WIDE Project, I traveled to several project’s partner university in Asia for project meeting. In this meeting, I met many networking professionals and we share the knowledge and good practice in the networking field. Beside practical skills, WIDE Project also encourage us to do research on networking and provide some research grant for publishing some conferences/journals papers or writing an internet draft to gain more academic experiences.
In short, WIDE Project provide me an environment that can improve my both theory and practical skills in the field of networking. Furthermore, WIDE Project also has a significant contribution to development of human resources and internet infrastructures in Asian countries including Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos and so on . Therefore, I highly recommend to foreigner, who wants to pursue Master and Ph.D. program in Japan, to enroll in one of WIDE-related universities such as NAIST, University of Tokyo and Keio University in order to obtain extensive academic experiences with relevant practical skills.
Senior Security Consultant
Symantec Corporation
My name is Sergio Carrilho and I was a Masters student from Mozambique, in the University of Tokyo, Esaki Lab. I did my research on Delay Tolerant Networks, which consisted in establishing communications paths, without the need for infrastructure.
Thanks to the WIDE project, it was possible to get to know different, bright people, working in areas related to my research, that provided invaluable feedback and input (in poster sessions and diverse discussions), helping me to achieve much more than was was set in the beginning. Also thanks to the support from WIDE, it was possible for me to establish a collaboration with the Universite Pierre and Marie Curie (LIP6), in where I worked closely with a WIDE researcher in Paris for 3 months, and culminated with solid results that were used in my Master thesis and some additional papers.
The WIDE group is characterized by a culture of collaboration and friendship, which creates perfect environment for ideas and innovation and to take place. The members are also very open and are ready to support and welcome any student/researcher. A proof of that are the WIDE camps, which are events where ideas flow, and lifetime friendships are built.