Systems, which can reform their structures through interaction with the environment, like living organisms, and produce new functions when necessary, are called complex adaptive systems or emergent systems. Evolution, development, adaptation, and learning are typical examples of the emergent behavior of complex adaptive systems. Emergent behavior is also critical to the sustainable development of human society, such as in individuals, organizations, and communities. It is also becoming a requirement that even artificial systems such as robots and networks possess emergent behavior.

The Department of Computational Intelligence and Systems Science was founded in 1996 with the objective of scientifically understanding the emergent principles displayed by these complex adaptive systems, and establishing design principles and methodologies to engineer intelligent functions. In 2000, five years after its foundation, the department set forth the education and research areas shown in the figure below. These are:"understanding the constructional principles of life and the brain through experiments and mathematics,""analyzing and understanding humans and society using system science,""engineering autonomous intelligence," and"creating an emergent society which enables the generation of diverse functions." The department promotes education and research centering on these four research areas. The researchers of the department are leaders in the fields shown below form a knowledge hub. In addition, they carry out leading-edge research in collaboration with foreign and domestic education and research institutions and business corporations.

In 2004, a 21st Century COE Program"Creation of Agent-Based Social Systems Sciences" (Leader: Professor Hiroshi Deguchi) was launched at the Department of Computational Intelligence and Systems Science (main site) and the Department of Value and Decision Science (secondary site). The objective of the department for graduate school education is to create trans-disciplinary leaders who can take the lead in cutting-edge fields while demonstrating their initiative in cross-disciplinary fields. For this purpose, the department puts energy into the development and enhancement of the Network of Excellence (NOE) educational program.