The Joint Summer School was established in 2012 as an international joint program among the Keio University Graduate School of Medicine, Karolinska Institutet (Sweden), King’s College London (UK), and Peking University Health Science Center (China). The program brings together outstanding doctoral students from each country to gain cutting-edge research knowledge through lectures by faculty members from each university and to deepen research exchange among the students. The four participating universities take turns hosting the program, which centers on a series of lectures. For 2026, Keio-SPRING joined as co-organizer, and Keio's participation expanded beyond the Graduate School of Medicine to include doctoral students from the Graduate School of Science and Technology and the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences.
This year’s Summer School was held from Monday, August 24, to Friday, August 28, hosted by King’s College London, under the theme “AI and Healthcare.” Each university sent two or three faculty members and about five doctoral students. Lecturers from Keio included Professor Masato Yasui of the Department of Pharmacology, a founding member of the program, as well as Project Professor Takahiko Koyama of WPI-Bio2Q and Assistant Professor Yusuke Hiki of the Department of Biosciences and Informatics, Faculty of Science and Technology. Faculty members from the other universities gave lectures in a wide range of fields, including health data science, medical epidemiology, biostatistics, bioinformatics, machine learning, and neuroimaging.
Alongside lively exchanges among students and between students and lecturers, the program gave the doctoral students many opportunities to look at their own research from new perspectives. This year, students gave short presentations of four to six minutes each on how they could connect their own research with AI. Each student explored AI’s potential from the standpoint of their own field, and the presentations were highly varied. For students from different disciplines, they were a valuable chance to learn about one another’s research and pick up fresh perspectives.
The program also featured a PhD Workshop for students, where external speakers led discussion-based sessions on the range of skills needed to grow as a researcher. Taking up themes including “Innovative Researcher,” “Research Impact & Knowledge Exchange,” and “Writing Skills,” participants considered questions such as how to connect research outcomes to society and what value they can create as researchers. Each approached these questions from their own position and shared their views. Students commented that although the content was challenging, they gained new ways of thinking about research that will be useful in their future work.
Participants also visited the London Institute for Healthcare Engineering (LIHE). LIHE is a King’s College London research center that brings together medicine and engineering to advance the research and development of innovative medical technologies. Touring LIHE’s state-of-the-art research environment and facilities in person, participants saw researchers from different fields working together to advance medicine and got a sense of how cutting-edge research develops into real-world medical technologies.
With Keio-SPRING as co-organizer, this year’s program brought together doctoral students from three different fields—medical sciences, science and technology, and pharmaceutical sciences—and sparked more cross-disciplinary exchange than in previous years. The international, interdisciplinary setting allowed students to broaden their expertise and build relationships that could lead to future joint research and international research networks.
The Joint Summer School 2027 is scheduled to be hosted by Karolinska Institutet, continuing under the theme “AI and Healthcare.” By pooling the expertise and research experience of students and faculty members from the four universities, the program is expected to foster researchers who will become future global leaders and to further develop international research networks in AI and healthcare.
Comments from a Participating Student
I have primarily been a user of AI and bioinformatics technologies, so meeting researchers who are actually developing these tools was very inspiring. It made me realize that involving informatics specialists in my own research could further improve its quality. Through a member in this program, I am already making arrangements to connect with a bioinformatics team at King’s College London. (Participating student)