Dear Friends of UTokyo:
Year 2013 will soon come to an end. We hope that you are all well and enjoying your work.
Although it may be difficult to project the world economy of the future, Japan has finally got out of the deflationary economy that has plagued the nation for many years. Abenomics, which FUTI Director and Professor emeritus of Yale University Dr. Koichi Hamada has been promoting, serving as Advisor to the Cabinet, is expected to take effect. With Tokyo having been selected as the host city of the 2020 Summer Olympic Games, Japanese Society seems to be regaining its cheerfulness and vitality.
As reported in our Newsletter No. 8, the fundraising campaign of FY 2012-2013 ended successfully as in the preceding year. We are truly grateful to those individuals and Shintec Inc. in Houston Texas who gave generous donations to FUTI. Thanks to your gracious support, we were able to provide scholarships to eight UTokyo students who took summer courses in U.S. universities, and we sent ten outstanding U.S. students to participate in the summer internships or summer courses sponsored by UTokyo. Excerpts of their reports are included in this issue, from which you will find that your gifts gave invaluable stimulation and wonderful experiences to these young people who are likely to grow into future leaders in Japan and America.
In our research grant programs, we continue to support the exchange program for young researchers of the UTokyo-Kavli Institute of Physics and Mathematics for the Universe (IPMU) and its satellite office at the University of California, Berkeley. We also provide financial support to the joint curriculum development effort between Columbia University and UTokyo in a graduate course on condensed matter physics. We are hopeful that these programs will nurture the young generation who will possess a global perspective and ability to conduct research in the international scene.
We now enter the fifty year of our annual fundraising campaign, since we started the summer scholarship program and research grant program in FY 2009-2010. The internationalization effort of UTokyo is making vigorous progress, and is expanding its study abroad programs in terms of their types as well as the number of participating students. As a result, the there is an increasing level of expectations for FUTI’s support. Such demands can be met only by your greater support of our program.
Please mail to us a check together with your completed form, which is download able from our website http://docs.friendsofutokyo.org/DonationForms/FUTI_DonationByMailForm.pdf
Alternatively, you can donate online by charging it to your credit card, by clicking our web-based online donation system. https://www.friendsofutokyo.org/?page_id=583 Online donation is a simplest and most reliable way of donations. Please also consider donating your appreciated securities or distributions from your IRA account, directly to FUTI, as is explained in the related article in this newsletter and in our website https://www.friendsofutokyo.org/?page_id=392. You will receive greater benefits in terms of tax savings, compared with cash donations.
We look forward to receiving greater support from many more friends of UTokyo.
Hisashi Kobayashi
President of Friends of UTokyo, Inc.
Yuichiro Kuwama, MD
Director and Treasurer of Friends of UTokyo, Inc.
Articles in this newsletter:
- Please Support FUTI’s FY 2013-2014 Fundraising Campaign
- Excerpts of Reports by FUTI’s Scholarship Recipients in 2013
- Donating Securities Such as Stocks in an Option
- Engrave your name on the Yasuda Auditorium
- Donors’ messages: Haruo Kawahara, Hirokazu Miura, Masako Osako and Yasuhide Watanabe
- Blog Article: Meaning of Education: Enhancement of Capabilities or Help Catching Up
