This award supports the participation of young American engineers in a U.S.-Japan joint seminar on frontiers of engineering to be held in Keihanna, Japan from November 4-6, 2004. The co-organizers are Professor James G. Fujimoto at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston and Dr. Kazuhiro Sakurada of the Kyowa Hakko Kogyo Company in Tokyo, Japan. In an effort to enhance networks among young Japanese and American engineers and their home institutions, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), the Engineering Academy of Japan (EAJ), and the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) are organizing the Fourth Japan-American Frontiers of Engineering Symposium. This activity is designed to bring together a select group of young emerging American and Japanese leaders from academia, government labs and industry to discuss pioneering technical work and leading edge research in various engineering fields and industry sectors. The goal of the symposium is to facilitate an interdisciplinary transfer of knowledge and methodology that could eventually lead to collaborative networks of young engineers from the two countries. About 60 outstanding young engineers, 30 from each country, will participate in the meeting. The program organizers, consisting of 10 distinguished younger engineers, will organize the symposium and identify topics and speakers. Sessions will consist of talks by speakers on advances and opportunities in their engineering fields followed by discussion. Speakers will focus their talks on cutting-edge research and innovation, keeping in mind that the audience will be technically sophisticated but nonspecialists.
The co-organizers have complementary engineering expertise in the field. This enables them to evaluate and attract the best engineering researchers to participate. The interdisciplinary nature of the meeting facilitates interactions that would not have occurred otherwise. The exchange of ideas and data with Japanese experts in the field will enable U.S. participants to advance their own work, and will set the stage for future collaborative projects. Following the seminar the organizers plan to establish a workshop web page. Conference proceedings will be published on this web site.
