Call for Nominations for new Secretary and Treasurer
FUTI seeks nominations of candidates to serve as Secretary or Treasurer for the Board of Directors. At present, Mr. Yasuhide Watanabe, NO&T NY, is serving as an interim Secretary, and Prof. Kobayashi, the President, as an interim Treasurer. Job Description: Secretary Work closely with the President and Treasurer. He/she needs to be a good communicator. Take minutes of Board meetings and obtain signatures of other Board members, if resolutions are made in the meetings. Keep and maintain all the essential documents. Job Description: Treasurer Work closely with the President and Secretary. Prepare quarterly financial statements to be presented to the Board, and prepare and file Federal and State tax returns. Work with the FUTI’s accounting firm when review or auditing of FUTI’s financial statements is required. Articles in this newsletter:
The New Office and Mailing Address of FUTI
On September 16th the FUTI Board made a resolution that the office of Friends of UTokyo, Inc. shall move to 347 West 57th Street, #33B, New York, New York 10019-3171. This address (the home of President Kobayashi) will be registered as FUTI’s new office address for correspondences with the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) and New York State’s tax authority. For general correspondences, however, use of the following private mail box at its nearby UPS store is encouraged: Friends of UTokyo, Inc. 331 West 57th Street, #164, New York, NY 10019-3101. From its establishment in the fall of 2007 until last year, the office address of FUTI has been c/o Masuda International, 152 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019, which was the office of Mr. Junji Masuda, the founding president of FUTI. Earlier this year, the FUTI office address was changed to c/o Nagashima Ohno & Tsunematsu NY LLP at the same address, the employer of Mr. Yasuhide Watanabe, Interim Secretary. President Kobayashi and his Board members take this opportunity to thank President Emeritus Masuda and Mr. Watanabe for having provided numerous administrative tasks, such as receiving donation letters and sending acknowledgments and receipts. Mr. Watanabe’s office, which also serves as NY Ichokai’s office, will be asked to continue supporting FUTI’s correspondences with the NY Ichokai members. Articles in this newsletter:
Annual Board Meeting
FUTI’s Annual Board Meeting was held on September 16, 2011 at the Nippon Club in mid-Manhattan. It was attended by four Board members (Prof. Hisashi Kobayashi, President & Interim Treasurer; Dr. Masaaki Yamada, newly appointed Director of University Relations; Prof. Koichi Hamada, Director; and Prof. Akihiko Tanaka, Director). The Board made resolutions on the change of the FUTI office and mailing addresses (see the related article in this issue) and reappointment of all officers (the president and three directors) in accordance with the By-Laws. The Board continues to seek nominations of candidates for Secretary and Treasurers, and reappointed Mr. Yasuhide Watanabe and President Kobayashi as an Interim Secretary and an Interim Treasurer, respectively, until their successors are found. Articles in this newsletter:
FUTI Announces Travel Grants for Graduate Students and Postdocs Involved in the IPMU-BCTP Collaboration
Photo: Prof. Hitoshi Murayama, Director, IPMU at the University of Tokyo and Professor, University of California, Berkeley FUTI has awarded a travel grant of $10,000 to support an exchange of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows between The Institute of the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (IMPU) at the University of Tokyo and the Berkeley Center for Theoretical of Physics (BCTP) at the University of California, Berkeley. The IMPU-Berkeley was established in 2007 to promote collaboration between the physicists at the University of California, Berkeley and the IMPU at UTokyo. Under the exchange program, Japanese students and researchers from the IPMU at UTokyo will benefit from exposure to the active research environment in Berkeley with a broad spectrum of topics in theoretical particle physics. At the same time, Berkeley members will be exposed to a wider variety of topics at the IPMU at UTokyo normally not discussed within the BCTP. The FUTI’s grant is expected to support the travel of five Berkeley students or postdocs going to the IPMU at UTokyo and six UTokyo students travelling to Berkeley. In October, BCTP is planning a workshop on supersymmetry at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in CERN, Switzerland. The IPMU-UTokyo will host frequent workshops called “focus weeks” which will benefit Berkeley members who are FUTI award recipients. IMPU, an institute hosted by the University of Tokyo, is one of the five centers established by Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports and Technology in 2007 under the World Premier International Research Center Initiative (WPI Program) with the purpose of creating top world-level research centers. The IMPU’s collaborating international institutions include the Department of Physics, University of California-Berkeley, Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, and l’Institute des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques in France. In the words of its Director, Hitoshi Murayama, it is “a unique research center in the world that spans from pure mathematics to theoretical physics, to experimental physics, astronomy, and applied mathematics.” During the 2010-2011, FUTI’s grant for the IMPU-Berkeley was applied to support the travel of three graduate students and two postdocs at Berkeley visiting IMPU-UTokyo and six UTokyo members participating in workshops and other events at Berkeley. Physics research is both collaborative and international, and this grant that fosters the travel and exchange of young scientists supports this notion. Please visit the IMPU’s website at http://www.ipmu.jp/ (English) and http://www.ipmu.jp/ja (Japanese). Articles in this newsletter:
Reports from the Participants of IARU’s Global Summer Program
FUTI granted “International Leadership Awards” to eight students who participated in the International Alliance for Research Universities (IARU) Global Summer Program (GSP). Four UTokyo students attended the program at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), and one Yale and three UC Berkeley undergraduates studied at UTokyo. The GSP provides an exciting learning experience that connects university students with outstanding peers from other IARU member institutions around the world. The students have the opportunity to explore some of the most urgent challenges and opportunities for the humanities in the 21st century. In the Berkeley program, the UTokyo participants were enrolled in either “Media and Society: The Middle East in the Global Context” (see the reports by Takashi Kawato and Zoheir Mottaki ) or “Summer Peace Institute: Human Security and Peacebuilding” (see the reports by Yutaro Mochida and Manae Uchibori). Through the rigorous class work and discussions (and the required volunteer work in Costa Rica as well, in the case of the Summer Peace Institute), the students found their experiences to be eye-opening. For example, Mr. Mochida, a law and politics major at UTokyo, reports “This course opened my eyes in various ways, which I think would never have happened if I were just studying in Japan. Not only from the new knowledge I gained from the lecture, but also through the volunteer work, I realized the importance of connecting a theory to practice and the real world. In addition, the experience of getting together with many students who came from literally all over the world and talking about peace-making gave me a sense that the world can be small and united no matter how diverse the nationalities or races may be. Interacting and wishing peace with all kinds of people from the bottom of our hearts was truly interesting and I would never forget it. The GSP at UTokyo offered four courses: “Sustainable Urban Management,” “Japan in Today’s World,” “Nanoscience,” and “Introduction to the Japanese language.” The American students who participated in the UTokyo GSP program were equally impressed by their experiences (see the reports by Melissa Milder, Lisa Bohn, Kristin Low, and Tiffany Pang ). Ms. Milder, a bioengineering major at UC Berkeley, who took the class on Nanoscience writes (in summary) “The University of Tokyo is one of the most prestigious universities in the world, especially in the bioengineering field. Being in a small class of only seven students made it a much more casual setting in which we could get to know the professors and other students more on a personal level. They were always welcoming and encouraging of our questions. They really cared about our understanding of the material as students and they were all very proud of their own research. I learned a lot about the many different fields of nanoscience and biotechnology and, as a result, I have been able to discover what areas of research I am really interested in. But by learning about the life-changing research that these professors are working on and physically seeing what they are currently doing in their laboratories, I was able to realize what kind of research I was most interested in. As a result, I have been motivated to get more involved with such research at my university and hopefully contribute to a life-changing discovery in the future.” Prof. Hisashi Kobayashi, President of FUTI, remarks “The experiences of these FUTI awardees are fully in line with FUTI’s commitment to groom leaders of the future. We would like to thank Shintech Inc. and the generous donors who made these scholarships possible.” Articles in this newsletter:
Invited Article: Activities of “Kagakusha Network” (“Scientist Network”) and a Guidepost to Study at U.S. Graduate Schools.
By Tomonori Yamamoto and Taiji Oashi (Translated by Hisashi Kobayashi and edited by Brian L. Mark) In December 2009, a major Japanese newspaper carried an article reporting on the steep drop in the number of Japanese students who study in the U.S. Since then a number of reports have been written on this marked trend. The number of Japanese students who came to the U.S. significantly increased during the period of Japan’s high economic growth. It remained around 46,000 during 1994/95 through 2002/03. But thereafter, the number sharply dropped down to the level of slightly less than 25,000 (see the reference). The same trend is found in the total number of Japanese students who went abroad, not just to the U.S. There are many plausible explanations for this trend : the so-called “harvibolization” (or grass-eating) and “inward-looking” trait of the young generation, the matured Japanese society, the decline of Japan’s economy, the marked increase in the cost of attending U.S. colleges, and so forth. Our group, Kagakusha Network (where Kagakusha is a Japanese word for “scientist”) formed in 2000, has been continuing various activities to cultivate scientists and engineers of the next generation who can play an active role on the international stage. In this article we will describe our efforts and achievements, and pose some questions as to how one can grow up to become a global leader of tomorrow. Kagakusha Network started as an effort of compiling a mailing list in the year 2000, when the information concerning the graduate study abroad in science and engineering disciplines was not readily available. We began the effort to develop a community where three different groups –those who are currently enrolled in graduate schools abroad, those who have completed graduate study, and those who are contemplating to pursue graduate study abroad—can share information. Through that forum we strived to help, encourage and enhance each other. The name “Kagakusha Network” was coined by its founders, Dr. Shigeki Sugii and Dr. Akiko Futamura, who aspired to become scientists who can perform well and be accepted in the international scene. Since then our activities have been consistently guided by the following principles: (i) to construct a human network through which Japanese graduate students and researchers who are already abroad or aspiring to study abroad can stimulate and work hard together, (ii) to cultivate leaders of the next generation who can take an active part in a global environment and (iii) to contribute to the future of Japan’s science and technology by promoting a better understanding of graduate education systems of Japan and abroad. Toward such goals, the activities of Kagakusha Network are built around the following three pillars. First, we administer a mailing list to support those who wish to study at graduate schools abroad and to help them communicate with those who are already abroad or who have completed their graduate study. At present we have over 260 members, composed of Japanese graduate students and researchers who are currently enrolled in, or have graduated from, graduate schools in the U.S. and Europe. Second, we distribute a mail magazine for free, which contains articles on personal experiences contributed by those who have attended graduate schools abroad, and various tutorial articles for the general public that explain the world’s most advanced research topics. This magazine has been periodically published since 2007 and has a wide readership, not just those who are interested in pursuing graduate study abroad. Third and last, we hold orientation meetings for students who are interested in graduate study abroad in the fields of science and engineering, and organize seminars concerning graduate education. In future, we plan to hold workshops on such topics as ”support of the career development after the completion of graduate study, “ and “women’s advancement in society and support of their career development.” As part of our activities outlined above, we published in March 2010, a book entitled “U.S. Graduate Schools: A Path for Global Scientists & Engineers.” This book focuses on how to prepare for studying in leading U.S. graduate schools which, with their excellent education programs, continue to play a leading role in advancing the state-of-the-art in science and technology, and to send out outstanding researchers into the world who will become future leaders. We, the contributors of the book, are driven by our desire to support those who aspire to become such researchers. The book was published by ALC Press Inc., which has a good reputation in publications on “studying abroad” and “language study.” It is composed of three parts loaded full of information and stories of experiences that the 36 contributors have provided in earnest. In Part I “Information,” we fully cover basic information pertaining to graduate study such as why we pursued graduate study in the U.S.; lectures and curriculums of U.S. graduate schools; application and admission processes; financial support available during the study; and careers to pursue after graduation. Part I also discusses such topics as research fields that are drawing attention at present; talents or skills in great demand; and various statistical data concerning studying abroad. In Part II “Practice,” we discuss such topics as how to gather information necessary to achieve studying abroad; how to select schools to which to apply; a sequence of guiding steps from preparing for applications till winning the admission. It contains practical materials such as many stories relating personal experiences of members of Kagakusha.net. In Part III “Interviews,” such distinguished people as Prof. Masatoshi Koshiba (a Nobel laureate in physics); Prof. Kiyoshi Kurokawa (a former special advisor for the Japanese Cabinet); Prof. Hiroshi Ishii (Associate Director of MIT Media Laboratory); and Dr. Koichi Kitazawa (President of Japan Science and Technology Agency) discuss, in an interview style, their personal experiences of studying abroad. Their powerful messages that will stir one’s spirit should be appealing to every reader, regardless of his or her special field. As stated above, our main activity is the support of overseas study at the graduate level. As the globalization of our
Fundraising Results and Financial Statements of July 2010 through June 2011
At the Board meeting of August 30th, Prof. Hisashi Kobayashi, FUTI President and Interim Treasurer, reported on the fundraising result of the FY 2010-2011, which ran from July 1, 2010 through June 30, 2011. The total amount of donations was $98,651, out of which $58,461 came from the distributions of Shintech’s Trust Fund, and $40,192 were contributed by 45 individuals, including matching grants from two corporations. The total revenue was significantly lower than $139,633 raised in FY 2009-2010, which consisted of $96,432 from Shintech’s Trust fund and $43,200 from 42 individuals. “Although the number of individual donors was slightly up, from 42 to 45, the total amount of contributions is lower than last year by about $3,000. The dividends from the investments of Shintech’s Trust Fund, however, declined markedly by as much as $38,000 compared to FY 2009-2010 (i.e., from $96,432 to $58,461), reflecting the weakened financial market . I am afraid that the dividends from the Trust fund will go down below $50,000 in FY 2011-2012. In order to maintain the same level of grant and award programs, we must increase considerably donations from individuals. We need to broaden the base of our donors, as well as ask the individuals to give more to support the worthy programs of FUTI,” remarked Kobayashi. The list of donors is posted on the FUTI website. Kobayashi also reported that the expenses in FY 2010-2011were $88,195. The breakdown was (i) research grants $40,000 ($30,000 to Yale, and $10,000 to U.C. Berkeley) ; (ii) summer scholarships $41,000 ($21,000 to U.C. Berkeley, $11,000 to Yale, and $9,000 to MIT), and (iii) operating expenses $7,195 ($2,283 for website maintenance and redesign, $2,000 to an accounting firm for review of FUTI’s financial statements FY 2009-2010, $1,241 for giveaways at NY Icho-kai Annual Meeting, $708 for office supplies, $270 for postage, $238 for courier services, $199 for laptop depreciation, $196 for computer technical service, and $60 for NYS tax filing fee). FUTI’ s total asset is $110,221.92, consisting of $108,525.71 in checking/savings accounts with HSBC Bank USA and $1,696.21 as the current value of a laptop, and no liabilities. FUTI’s financial statements can be seen here. Comparison of the amount of donations received in FY 2009-2010 (left) and that in FY 2010-2011 (right) We deeply appreciate the corporations and individuals who have contributed to Friends of UTokyo, Inc (FUTI) in the fiscal year 2010-2011 (July 2010-June 2011). During this period, the donations to FUTI totaled $98,651. This includes the dividend income from a Trust Fund of Shintec Inc., (a U.S. subsidiary of ShinEtsu Co.) , and donations from individuals. Matching gifts from Mitsubishi Corporation USA and Mizuho USA Foundation are added to their employees’ donation amounts. Articles in this newsletter:
Revamping of the FUTI Website Completed
The overhaul of the FUTI website is now complete. The design and implementation have been done by Ms. Amy Vaida of Amy I productions, who also designs FUTI’s eNewsletter. The website consists of three main pages: “About Us,” “Giving,” and “Grants and Awards.” The “About us” page is divided into subpages: “What is FUTI? What are its Purposes,” “History and Organization,” “Accomplishments,” “Board Members,” and “Advisory Committee.” Biographies of all Board members and Advisors are found by clicking the individuals’ names. The new “Giving” page is as comprehensive as you may find in any major non-profit organization’s website. In the past two years, individual donors could contribute to FUTI only by mailing personal checks. Now one can make a fast and secure donation online by charging it to his/her credit card through a convenient web-based PayPal system. One will receive an immediate record of payment, followed by a formal acknowledgment and receipt from the FUTI office. In addition, a donation by wire transfer from your bank account to FUTI’s bank account, donation of securities (such as stocks, bonds and mutual funds), and donation of a distribution from an IRA (individual retirement account) to FUTI are now possible and the latter two options may give the donor tax benefits. FUTI is also ready to accept gifts from generous individuals and corporations to Endowment Funds to seek a long-term financial stability for its future activities. The new “Grants and Award” page provides a comprehensive description on how to prepare research grant applications and scholarship applications and when to submit them. As you find in this e-Newsletter, research grants of $30,000 and $10,000 were given, respectively, to the UTokyo-Yale Initiative program and the IPMU (Institute of Physics and Mathematics for the Universe) program at UC Berkeley. As for scholarship awards, FUTI supported seven U.S. students (MIT, UC Berkeley, and Yale) and six UTokyo students who attended summer programs or summer internship programs. The reports of these students are found in this and the November issues of FUTI e-Newsletter. In the fiscal year 2011-2012, FUTI plans to provide similar grants and scholarships as detailed in the web page. In addition to the “About Us,” “Giving,” and “Grants and Awards” pages, the News section includes such items as the fundraising campaign report and announcements of future lectures and meetings. Back issues of the FUTI e-Newsletter will be posted. We believe that the website and e-Newsletter are the two most important tools through which FUTI can communicate with all individuals and corporations that support FUTI and researchers and students who will benefit from FUTI’s programs. We are very much interested in hearing your comments and suggestions concerning how our website and e-Newsletter can be further improved. Please write to us by clicking here. Articles in this newsletter:
Dr. Masaaki Yamada appointed Director of University Relations
On August 30th, the FUTI Board elected Dr. Masaaki Yamada, a Distinguished Laboratory Research Fellow at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), to a newly created position, Director of University Relations. In this capacity, Dr. Yamada will be primarily responsible for planning and coordinating FUTI’s research grant and award programs, by interacting with universities in both the U.S. and Japan. He received his B.S. degree in Applied Physics and M.S. degree in Nuclear Engineering in 1966 and 1968, respectively, both from UTokyo (the University of Tokyo), and received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Illinois in 1973. His main research area is plasma physics that is relevant to both fusion and space-astrophysics. Dr. Yamada was a visiting professor at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EFPL), Switzerland (1988), Kyoto University (1989), and UTokyo (1994 and 2010), and has served as their Ph.D. thesis advisor of a dozen graduate students of Princeton University, UTokyo, and Purdue University. He has been a Fellow of the American Physical Society since 1985 and received the APS 2002 Excellence Award in Plasma Physics Research and Princeton University’s Kaul Prize in 2003. “I am impressed with the goals of FUTI. It is an honor for me to serve on the Board. I will do my best to enhance international research collaboration through the FUTI program,” said Dr. Yamada. “We are delighted to have such a distinguished scientist as an executive director of FUTI. Dr. Yamada is not only a world renowned scientist but has an impressive track record of serving his community. He co-founded the Princeton Community Japanese Language School (PCJLS) in 1980, and served as Chairman of its Board in 1985-1995. His experiences in this non-profit organization as well as his close relations with leading universities in the U.S. and Japan will make our grant and award programs more credible and prestigious,” remarked FUTI President Kobayashi, a long-time friend of Dr. Yamada. Dr. Yamada was introduced to all members of the FUTI Board and Advisory Committee (AC) at the FUTI Board & AC meeting held at the Nippon Club on September 16. Articles in this newsletter: