Boulder
type: channel
date: 2019-01-28T03:25:57Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Being second to none in a certain field nurtures the confidence needed for becoming a pathfinder
items: Fostering Human Resources Capable of Recognizing Their Connection to the World and Solving Problems
items: Cultivating International Human Resources Who Can Bridge the Gap between Theory and Practice
items: An encounter with a new world is a chance for self-growth
items: Study how the market economy works, to discover your own connections to society
items: An Application-Driven Search for New Materials
items: Addressing Energy Issues by Studying Social Systems as a Whole
items: Creating Systems to Solve Healthcare Issues
items: Requirements for Working on the Global Stage
items: Devise Your Own Solutions: Become a Leader that Builds Society

Being second to none in a certain field nurtures the confidence needed for becoming a pathfinder
type: item
date: 2017-06-08T05:43:31Z
creator: neopa
subject: Social Design
description: ———You majored in economics at the University of Tokyo and continued your studies at Stanford University where […]
encoded: ———You majored in economics at the University of Tokyo and continued your studies at Stanford University where you received a master’s degree in statistics and a doctorate in economics. Kawai：After finishing my undergraduate studies at the University of Tokyo I went to Stanford for graduate work in economics. But statistics was so interesting that I earned my master’s degree in that field. Then as a doctoral student in economics, I went to the Brookings Institution where I completed my dissertation. After that, I joined the Institute of Social Science at the University of Tokyo in 1986 where I taught graduate courses in international finance. My next move came a decade later with the Asian financial crisis of 1997 when I was invited by the World Bank to work on the financial crisis as chief economist for the East Asia and Pacific region. I continued at this post for three years. Ever since I first applied to Stanford University, I had always wanted to work for an international organization. So I thought my dream had come true when I got this offer from the World Bank. As an academic researcher, I was limited to vicarious experiences gained through reading and understanding what others had written. The very exciting thing about working for the World Bank was that I was in a position to experience everything firsthand. ———From there, you moved to the Ministry of Finance as Deputy Vice Minister of Finance for International Affairs. Kawai：Actually, I got the offer several months after returning to the university having finished my work at the World Bank. The invitation to move to the Ministry of Finance came from Mr. Haruhiko Kuroda, the current Governor of the Bank of Japan, who in those days was Vice Minister of Finance for International Affairs. I guess I could not refuse the offer! (Laughter) So, I spent two years at the Ministry of Finance before returning to the Institute of Social Science. Soon thereafter, Mr. Kuroda was appointed president of the Asian Developme…

Fostering Human Resources Capable of Recognizing Their Connection to the World and Solving Problems
type: item
date: 2017-03-15T06:34:05Z
creator: neopa
subject: Resource
description: Interest in Indiana Jones led to a career in world history education. ——— Your CV says that you were a history […]
encoded: Interest in Indiana Jones led to a career in world history education. ——— Your CV says that you were a history major in college, did your graduate studies in education and that you were formerly a high school teacher. What field of history did you study? Hanai：I studied the Old Testament. When I was a fifth grader, I saw the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and became a fan of Indiana Jones. It turns out Indiana Jones was actually a biblical archeologist. There is a scene in the movie where he is shown reading an ancient Hebrew inscription, and I decided right then and there, “This is what I want to do.” So, I went to Tsukuba University and studied oriental history. As a high school student I tutored younger students, and in college I had a part-time job at a cram school. These experiences taught me the joy of teaching others what I myself had studied and set me on the course of becoming a teacher. As an undergraduate, I was a history major, and my plan as a graduate student was to study the pedagogy of teaching history. After completing my studies, I worked for six years as a world history teacher. But there came a point where I felt I had exhausted everything that I had accumulated during my undergraduate and graduate studies. There was a great thirst within me for further study and fresh input. With an eye to returning to my teaching career, I entered the Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Tokyo and chose the problem of conflict resources in Congo as my research topic. ——— Why Congo? Hanai：I should start by explaining why I chose to study conflicts and disputes. During my third year in college, I travelled to Israel to see the land of the Old Testament. During my stay, I accidentally found an opportunity to visit a Palestinian refugee camp where I met an Old Testament scholar who was working for a NGO to provide support and assistance to the residents of the camp. She said to the members of our group, “You cannot be of any use here. But…

Cultivating International Human Resources Who Can Bridge the Gap between Theory and Practice
type: item
date: 2016-11-02T06:23:11Z
creator: neopa
subject: Social Design
description: Mapping out a career ——— You graduated in Latin American Studies from Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. As […]
encoded: Mapping out a career ——— You graduated in Latin American Studies from Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. As a student, did you have any ambitions or future occupation in mind? Nishizawa: Ever since I was a high school student I had wanted to work outside Japan, and around the time of my third year as an undergraduate, I started to think about my ideal future career path. I was increasingly attracted to the idea of a career that would allow me to move back and forth between the worlds of university and international business. I thought that I would like to retain a position as a researcher at a university, while at the same time working for an international organization, or somewhere else outside the university, every few years. I gave it lots of thought, and in the end decided to stay on for graduate studies in the economics field with the aim of becoming a researcher. However, I was shocked to find that graduates in the years above me seemed to be geniuses. I was suddenly acutely aware that I was not cut out to be a researcher, so I gave up the idea of trying to become a scholar, and instead decided to look for a job. I sought out a financial institution that had a particularly strong presence in international business, and eventually joined the Export-Import Bank of Japan (which currently trades as the Japan Bank for International Cooperation). photo: Masahiro Shida Travelling the world with work ———What work did you do when you first joined the bank? Nishizawa: For the first three years after joining the bank I was in the overseas investment research institute —in other words, the research department. At that time there was no Internet like there is today, so all we could do to gather information about overseas was cut articles out of newspapers, or go through written materials we received from news agencies. I subsequently received government funding to study overseas, acquiring a master’s degree in economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Unite…

An encounter with a new world is a chance for self-growth
type: item
date: 2016-05-17T02:38:51Z
creator: neopa
subject: Social Design
description: Q: Your area of specialization is International Political Economy (IPE). When did you start becoming intereste […]
encoded: Q: Your area of specialization is International Political Economy (IPE). When did you start becoming interested in this field? Iida: Back when I was a student, the idea of forming economic partnerships based on the Pacific Rim concept, a forerunner of today’s TPP, was just starting to appear here and there, mainly in academic societies. For my Master’s dissertation, I did a rather orthodox study tracing the evolution of this idea. Later APEC was formed, and now the TPP is coming about, so it was in a sense a pioneering idea. At the time, there were people disparaging my choice of topics, asking what sense it made to study such a nebulous idea. Looking back now, though, it seems like a rather important thing to have been doing from a future standpoint. Q: When did economics enter into your studies? Iida: I think it goes back to when I went to the US and encountered IPE, which was a relatively new field of study at the time. This was something that merged politics and economics. It wasn’t just a matter of someone in political science knowing a little about the economy from studying it in their spare time. There was a strong emphasis on its being a truly interdisciplinary field, so I thought this was something I really should study in earnest. In that sense, Harvard was a terrific environment, as the same building had a political science department in one wing and an economics department in the other wing. So if you just walked over to the next hall and “violated the airspace,” you could run into the likes of economist Jeffrey Sachs. There wasn’t much of a threshold between the two, and you could easily sit in on lectures. In terms of number, I attended lots of lectures in those days. I feel I was lucky in that regard. Q: In GSDM terms, you experienced what it is like to cross over into other areas of knowledge. Was your being in the US a big factor? Would you have had the same opportunity if you had stayed in Japan all that time? Iida: I think it’s logical to assume I…

Study how the market economy works, to discover your own connections to society
type: item
date: 2016-03-29T05:37:58Z
creator: neopa
subject: Social Design
description: Q: You are active in a wide range of economics fields. If you had to name your area of specialization, what wo […]
encoded: Q: You are active in a wide range of economics fields. If you had to name your area of specialization, what would that be? Iwamoto: I describe it as “public finance.” This involves a very wide variety of areas, so when conducting research on public finance the studies naturally tend to spread to many other fields. I’m the type of person with wide interests, who sticks his neck into many different things, so yes, I suppose I have studied quite a lot of areas over the years. I write one paper about one topic, and if that comes together well I go on to the next theme. That kind of style has resulted in my writing papers on a variety of subjects. In that sense, I may have a harder time than others in narrowing down just what it is that I specialize in. Q: It’s rather unusual, isn’t it, for an economist to take up so many different topics? Iwamoto: Perhaps, though I wouldn’t say that’s either a good or bad thing. In trying to define economics, rather than defining the discipline by the object of study, the economy, it is more common to define it as the economic way of thinking. There are many people who apply the economics thinking approach to targets other than the economy. This is seen as the contribution economics makes to society. I find myself sympathetic with that thinking. Q: It’s rather unusual, isn’t it, for an economist to take up so many different topics? Iwamoto: Perhaps, though I wouldn’t say that’s either a good or bad thing. In trying to define economics, rather than defining the discipline by the object of study, the economy, it is more common to define it as the economic way of thinking. There are many people who apply the economics thinking approach to targets other than the economy. This is seen as the contribution economics makes to society. I find myself sympathetic with that thinking. Q: It’s important for GSDM students studying natural sciences or social sciences other than economics, to know the basics of economics, right? Iwamoto: In carrying on …

An Application-Driven Search for New Materials
type: item
date: 2016-02-29T01:38:45Z
subject: Energy
description: Q: How did you get into carbon nanotube research? Maruyama: I started out in a completely different field, con […]
encoded: Q: How did you get into carbon nanotube research? Maruyama: I started out in a completely different field, conducting doctoral research on turbulent heat transfer in mechanical engineering. Even at that time, however, I was of a mind to try something new; and it so happened that I ended up studying abroad at Rice University, home to Richard Erret Smalley, winner of a Nobel Prize in 1996 for their discovery of fullerenes. Although I had no particular awareness of fullerenes, when I returned to Japan in 1991 after a two-year stint at Rice, it was right at the time when it became possible to synthesize fullerenes in macro quantities in the laboratory, so I decided to give it a try. <!-- --> Q: Why did you choose to focus on single-walled rather than multi-walled nanotubes? Maruyama: Multi-walled have their own appeal from the standpoints of thermal and other dynamics, but what I find really interesting is that single-walled nanotubes can become semiconductors. When carbon fiber is made very thin resulting in a semiconducting nanotube, it is not just a metal, or even the ultimate metal, but something that seems to turn the world upside down. This is the fascinating thing about single-walled nanotubes that makes me intent on studying them. Q: On the one hand there’s the scientist’s spirit of pursuing the interesting, and on the other the engineering aspect of looking for practical applications. Do you have a problem reconciling these seemingly opposite poles? Maruyama: I think both of these are in pretty good balance, so no, it’s not really a problem for me. After all, engineering has long been my field, including my doctorate. Someone in engineering will eventually come to think about practical uses, so even if we run off in the direction of pursing our fascinations, at the same time we have in the back of our mind the thought that at some point we will start considering methods of application. The notion of wanting to make use of something basic to do something practic…

Addressing Energy Issues by Studying Social Systems as a Whole
type: item
date: 2016-01-28T06:16:33Z
creator: neopa
subject: Energy
description: Q:The title of your PhD thesis dissertation was Integrated Energy Systems. What sparked your interest in the f […]
encoded: Q:The title of your PhD thesis dissertation was Integrated Energy Systems. What sparked your interest in the field? Matsuhashi: One of my advisors was a pioneer in the field of control engineering. By the time I was in graduate school the field was more or less mature and there were not many new directions left to research. My advisor told me: “The control of social and regional systems is going to be much more important than controlling motors and machines in the years to come.” and he shifted his focus to work on finding solutions for global warming problems and ways of optimizing energy systems. This was when I was working toward my doctorate. In 1988 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was formed, and the idea of cutting CO2 emissions by 20% was raised for the first time at the Toronto meeting. The trends in the wider world just happened to coincide with my doctoral thesis, and I’ve been in the field ever since. <!-- --> Q: Was it not a heavy burden to work on integrated energy systems as a student at the time? Matsuhashi: I actually found it a lot of fun. There were some macro issues involved. The standard approach in optimizing energy systems is to draw up a model of energy systems and try to minimize costs as much as possible, so even from that early stage I was working on trying to reduce CO2 emissions while keeping costs as low as possible. Q: You have involved systems in your research from quite an early stage. Today it is common for people to learn the elemental technology as students and broaden their interests to include policy issues later. What do you make of that development? Matsuhashi: In a sense, I suppose my research involves aspects whose concepts are close to public policy. The simplex methods involved in mathematical programming and linear programming are important concepts in my classes, and the idea of duality theory or duality is extremely important. In my lectures I try to get students to look closely at formulae and equations on…

Creating Systems to Solve Healthcare Issues
type: item
date: 2015-10-13T01:00:55Z
creator: neopa
subject: Healthcare
description: Q: How did you become interested in public health? Kobayashi: When I began my studies as a medical stude […]
encoded: Q: How did you become interested in public health? Kobayashi: When I began my studies as a medical student, I read various kinds of books, and one of the things that struck me from the reading was that the continuing development of healthcare technology was needed to solve medical problems. Another thing that struck me was that what matters is whether the necessary healthcare technology is being made available to people who are sick or others in need. My feeling was that we were still rather weak as far as both research and systems were concerned. I’ve always enjoyed traveling and during my time as a medical student I traveled all over Japan, thinking about the healthcare situation in remote areas. After graduation I went to Okinawa, where a lot of the smaller islands are quite remote from the main cities. But there, if anything, the systems for delivering healthcare were quite well established. So there again I became aware of how important it is to ensure that the proper frameworks are in place. Q： You incorporate economic approaches into your research. This must have been quite pioneering for the time. Kobayashi: From my student days I was interested in how wider systems related to healthcare provision, but the medical department didn’t have any faculty who could teach economics. After four years as an assistant at Teikyo University, I spent a year doing research at Harvard. During that time I audited two classes on public economy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. These were extremely useful in helping me to understand economics. After returning to Japan, I started to put what I’d learned into practice using empirical data. Another major problem in Japan at the time was that it was almost impossible to get access to usable data. Now the government has taken the lead in digitizing statements of medical expenses prepared by medical institutions for health insurance purposes and other documentation and is creating a system to make this information availab…

Requirements for Working on the Global Stage
type: item
date: 2015-07-31T05:24:45Z
creator: neopa
subject: Energy
description: photo:Ryoma.K Q:Professor Yoshikawa, you have been globally active through projects such as rural electrificat […]
encoded: photo:Ryoma.K Q:Professor Yoshikawa, you have been globally active through projects such as rural electrification in Myanmar. Tell us how you achieved this success. Yoshikawa: I joined the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (now the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry) after graduating from the Faculty of Law at the University of Tokyo. I was initially assigned to the Nuclear Industry Division at the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy in 1981 and dealt with nuclear fuel cycle affairs other than power generation. I learned the basic rules of being an administrative official there. Five years later, I was given the opportunity to study in the United States for two years. Upon my return, I worked for two more years in the Ministry of International Trade and Industry before I was loaned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1990 to 1993 as an economic secretary at the Japanese embassy in Tehran. From 1998 to 2001, I worked with JETRO in New York. I was then involved in the WTO Doha Round until 2006, when I started working for the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the OECD secretariat in Paris. I worked for IEA and OECD for five years before returning to Tokyo. <!-- photo:Ryoma.K --> Q: I understand you applied for the opening at IEA; was it always your intention to work abroad? Yoshikawa: I took an examination in Paris at the beginning of 2006. I was appointed Head of Country Studies Division at IEA, and then moved to OECD just under two years later. In 2010 I returned to IEA from my position as Deputy Director at OECD. Certainly, as a young man, I had entered public office with the hope of working on the international stage, but I did not have any of these specific positions in mind. If I had known beforehand, I would have prepared myself better when I was young. For example, I would have studied French and worked as an intern at an international agency. I think it would have been helpful in improving my credentials. photo:Ryoma.K National Int…

Devise Your Own Solutions: Become a Leader that Builds Society
type: item
date: 2015-06-10T01:05:40Z
subject: Social Design
description: photo:Ryoma.K Q: Professor Sakata, tell us how you arrived at your current research style of using network ana […]
encoded: photo:Ryoma.K Q: Professor Sakata, tell us how you arrived at your current research style of using network analysis to examine innovation and advanced technology. Sakata: The original intention of my research was to analyze social and economic phenomena as objectively as possible to provide effective support for the design of government policy and the decision-making process in corporate organizations. Based on my reflections on 20 years of experience as a government official, I felt that some information was not fully utilized in policy design and decision-making, even though abundant information is readily available. This has harmed the quality of the decision-making process and the development of more appropriate policies. Often, the fundamental direction of a policy is sound, but somehow its final design is flawed. I hope to contribute to rectifying this process by offering new techniques and methodologies of my own. I have always maintained that passion for the subject is pivotal to research. You could also call it keen interest or concern. As my research mainly focuses on social or economic phenomena, knowledge of areas such as economics or business management is essential to deeper interest in and understanding of the research subject. On the other hand, information engineering and web engineering are the most effective tools for objective analysis of these phenomena. Consequently, without saying which is better or which should be prioritized, I think that the progress of my research is made more efficient by the mastering of both disciplines. Q:What advice would you give to students considering entering GSDM? Sakata: I have been involved with students from the University of Tokyo for almost seven years, and I have not seen another university anywhere else in the world with so many talented people gathered at its door. I would love to see these students becoming leaders of society one day. One quality that I have always considered to be especially important i…