Grants and Writing Resources for Tohoku University
On 17 September 2026, two second-year master's students in the Division of Mechanical Engineering each received a Best Presentation Award at the Japan Society for Precision Engineering's 2026 autumn meeting. One presented a femtosecond-laser Fabry-Pérot etalon angle sensor with a wider measurement range; the other proposed a way to extend the range of Fourier-domain optical coherence tomography. Eleven days later a first-year doctoral student in the division received the SICE International Young Authors Award for IROS 2026 for a paper on a singularity lock mechanism based on rolling spool dynamics.
Prizes for Presented Research
The Division of Mechanical Engineering keeps a running list of prizes, and students account for most of its 2026 entries. A second-year master's student took the Young CFD Investigator Award at the 13th International Conference on CFD. A third-year doctoral student won the MARSS 2026 Best Student Paper Award, and first-year master's students collected student presentation awards at the 44th Aerospace Numerical Simulation Symposium and the Tribology Conference 2026 Spring Tokyo.
The university's research institutes give prizes as well. At the 26th research presentation meeting of the Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials, held 29 and 30 September 2026, a second-year master's student received the institute's Director's Award for operando measurements, using 3D-XAFS, of how active-material particles in all-solid-state battery electrodes behave during charging and discharging.
Scholarships From the University
Tohoku University's chart of financial support sets the university's programs beside national aid. The Tohoku University Genki-Maemuki Scholarship pays ¥360,000 a year to Japanese undergraduates who need financial help. The Tohoku University Global Hagi Scholarship pays ¥600,000 a year to master's students, Japanese or international, whom their graduate school recommends as outstanding. A tuition exemption program waives all or half of tuition for students who would struggle to pay it.
The scholarships page also lists three donor scholarships run through the Tohoku University Fund, among them the Paramount Bed Scholarship and the Miwako Doi Information Science Scholarship. Undergraduates in their third year or later and graduate students ask their faculty or graduate school office about outside foundation scholarships.
Doctoral Funding
For doctoral students, the university runs the Tohoku University Advanced Graduate School LEAP Program (東北大学高等大学院LEAPプログラム). The same financial aid chart lists a research incentive of ¥1,272,000 a year for every eligible student and ¥2,400,000 a year for students in degree programs. Tuition is waived in full for degree-program students and for Japanese students, a group the chart defines to include permanent residents. Students on leave, students past the standard program length and government-sponsored international students are excluded, and JSPS research fellows receive the tuition waiver alone.
Writing Support and the Doctoral Dissertation
The SLA support room, on the first floor of the Multimedia Education and Research Building on the Kawauchi campus, offers help with math, physics, chemistry, writing, English conversation and Japanese conversation. Its writing sessions teach the basic structure and rules of class reports. Students whose first language isn't Japanese can also get a native check of their Japanese writing. Journal submissions by graduate students and papers written in English, including graduation and master's theses, fall outside its scope.
Doctoral candidates start with the Education Affairs Division's page for students planning to submit a doctoral dissertation. It carries guidelines in Japanese and English on points to watch while writing and submitting, with links to the university's code of conduct on research misconduct, its guidelines for publishing research results and databases of journal copyright policies. A dissertation that contains an invention must be reported to the Intellectual Property Department before the invention becomes public.
Papers, theses and journal manuscripts written in English can come to our editors for a final check of grammar, consistency and format. See our Tohoku University dissertation and thesis editing and Tohoku University essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.
From Our Writing Guides
Compiled by James Peterson Brown, PhD, Managing Editor of Editors For Students. Links checked October 2026.
Editors For Students is an independent editorial service and is not affiliated with Tohoku University, and your faculty may endorse our services individually. We look forward to helping you bring your Tohoku University writing to its strongest, submission-ready form.