Jeff's Blog

April 2021 Lab website has changed to https://www.clab-tokyotech.org/

Feb. 2018, Yukino has begun preparations for opening new lab homepage to be hosted on Wix. Want to increase the number of photographs showing overal lab activity to give applicants a better idea of lab and my activities.

Jan. 2018, Held New Year's party at Teija's home. Enjoyed the food and drink with 4 lab students.

Dec. 2017, Student lab construction finished in South 6 bldg. Have space for 8 students and 3 vacancies for Sept 2018 admission with many applicants.

Sept. 2017, Two doctoral student (Norio and Michael) graduate this month. Congratulations to both. Michael has accepted a job in Boston and Norio will continue his research as a post-doc at NIMS in Tsukuba.

In addition, Michael was recently interviewed for a Japanese TV program, "Why did you come to Japan?" that focuses on what non-Japanese are doing in Japan. He talked about his lifestyle and his monthly expenditures of 100,000 yen (apt. rent, transportation and food expenses). In the past when I as involved with international exchange programs, I have received many inquiries from potential students about how much is costs to live in Tokyo area which he addressed.

Enjoyed the UKJEEL workshop organized by Dr. Ian Watson at the Univ. of Glasgow. Recently, I  posted some of the workshop photographs on the group facebook page.

Aug. 2017, Finished teaching my courses this summer and pleased to see the summer exchange student's final presentations. Getting ready for the UK-Japan Engineering Education League workshop at Glasgow Univ. next month.

March 2017, Japan's JICA announces new scholarship program called Innovative Asia for top tier Asia Univ. graduates to pursue graduate degrees at Japanese Univ. Tokyo Tech will accept 13 applicants in the fall of 2017.

March 2017, I traveled to Yangon Univ., Yangon Univ., Singapore  and OIST (Okinawa) recently. Prof. Cross gave a lecture on his energy related research activity in the Chemistry Dept. at Yangon univ.

Oct. 2016, updated my homepage index with recent publications and links to programs I work on. Also created an announcement for a logo design competition for the energy course.

Sept. 2016, spoke to students at Chulalongkorn Univ. in Bangkok about online learning and UK-Japan Engineering Education Workshop press release appears on Tokyo Tech Homepage. Congrats to Michael B. 2nd year doctor student in Cross lab selected to attend AOTULE meeting at HKUST in Nov. 23-25, 2016.

Aug. 2016, My new website was launced on the Transdisciplinary Science and Engineering website. I thank Kenta Yaegashi for preparing it.

Sept. 2015, Attended the Japan Society of Engineering Education International Symposium at Kyushu Univ. and presented a paper, "International Engineering and Science Research Exchange Program Enhancements through Innovations" made during the summer Tokyo Tech Research Opportunities Program (TiROP). The paper summarized innovations in the summer program made over 2012-2015.

Aug. 2015, Tokyo Tech will begin a new undergraduate degree program in Global Engineering Science starting in April 2016. Ten international students will be awarded four year MEXT scholarships to participate in this new engineering degree program. Application deadline is Sept. 30, 2015. I am coordinating high school student recruitment from Australia.

July 2015, Pleased to coordinate a Women in STEM panel discussion and visit of US Ambassador to Japan Carolyn Kennedy to Tokyo Tech to give opening remarks for Tokyo Tech, summer exchange and high school students (facebook, website).

Late-May 2015, recently I have received several inquiries from potential graduate students and doctoral students about how to make contact with a Tokyo Tech Prof. to undertake research in their lab. Tokyo Tech runs pretty much as a do-it-yourself institution. Usually introductions to a Prof. go more smoothly if it made by a colleague of the Prof. However, if that is not an option, feel free to contact the Prof. directly. Some Profs may or may not respond to unsolicited queries.

March 2015, will speak at the Univ. of Tokyo edX MOOC symp. about the Tokyo Tech Online Education Development Office's MOOC-making activity and strategy. I will visit UMP in Madrid, Spain to exchange information on exchange programs and attend a conference in Paris.

Feb. 2015, organizing a MOOC symposium at Tokyo Tech with edX in Boston related to Science and Engineering Education see here for further information and for registration see here.

Jan. 2015, at last the AOTULE wikipedia article that I submitted in 2012 was accepted. I feel like I accomplished something after 7 rejections by wiki editors over 2.5 years. It was a challenge to be acceptable based upon that AOTULE was a noteworthy organization. I am pleased to write that press releases from new members such as IITM (India) and HUST (Vietnam) have been supportive.

2014 overall, I traveled overseas a great deal in 2014 to Europe (UK, France), USA (Washington, California, Oklahoma) and Australia (Perth, Sydney, Melbourne). My longest trip was in Nov. from Boston to Melbourne (25 hr in the airplane over 2 days). Most of trips involve visiting universities to discuss exchanging students and exchanging information on engineering education programs. On each trip, I learn something new or about connections between Tokyo Tech and academic researchers world-wide. I have come to realize that traveling is part of what I do and outreach on behalf of Tokyo Tech is a role that I play. For 2015, I plan to travel to Madrid and Paris in March, the east coast of the US in May and then in Nov. I will be in Singapore.

Nov./Dec. 2014, I traveled to the Univ. of Melbourne for the annual AOTULE meeting on Nov. 26-28, and chaired the steering committee meeting. It was a very great feeling to meet with academics from Asia again and discuss issues regarding increasing student mobility. I was quite impressed that Chulalongkorn Univ. in Bangkok has opened a ASEAN camp for students to participate in Jan. 2015. In mid-Dec. I traveled to Perth, Australia, to attend the annual ACEEES doctoral student international forum. On Dec. 15th, I chaired a panel discussion with Prof. Brian Woodall from Georgia Tech on student leaders speaking on energy clubs from Stanford Univ., Univ. California Berkeley, Tokyo Tech and Univ. of Western Australia. It was a great session on student related energy club leadership and hope to continue such engagement with global student leaders in an international framework on energy related topics.

Oct. 2014, revised the Engineering Exchange brochure to Vol. 2. and I became the Tokyo Tech edX Project Manager. Began creating the first Tokyo Tech SPOC/MOOC with ESLI Director/Prof. Kei Hirose.

Sept. 2014, traveled to London to attend the UK-Japan Engineering Education Symposium at UCL and then on to Birmingham UK to attend the SEFI Conf. where I gave a paper, Like going to Mars, research exchange at Tokyo Tech.

Aug. 2014, traveled to edX in Boston for Studio Software training in order to create SPOCs/MOOCs.

July 2014, hosting Prof. Brian Woodall as TiROP scholar and Fulbright Fellow until June 2015. Brian is doing research on Japanese Energy Policy.

Started teaching Scientifc Writing my weekly graduate course to about 25 students in the EEI bldg., which is televised to a classroom in the Suzukakedai campus. Very pleased to learn of the student interests and strong motivation to take the class this semester. Have gone digital this time by putting the lecture videos and content on a closed moodle website. Learned of the Heilmeier Catechism from a doctoral student. Have been asking the same types of questions to my grad students. Glad to know it has a name.

March 2014, participated in 3 international symposium on student leadership education, UK-Japan engineering education and the Tokyo Tech education reform symposium panel discussion with MIT and UC Berkeley faculty. The dialogue at the panel discussion was eye-opening. In addition, I met a student and faculty delegation that was visiting from CMU Qatar. Furthermore, pleased to host Fulbright Fellow Georgia Tech Prof. Brian Woodall's Tokyo Tech research stay. Congratulations to Julia Nesheiwat for completing her Ph.D. in Mechanical Science and Engineering and graduating.

Feb. 2014, visited Stanford Univ. to attend the New Channels U.S.-Japan Dialogue 2014: "Energy Challenges and Opportunities, which was a great meeting bringing together Japanese stakeholders with related academic experts. While at Stanford, I met a grad student applicant for the TiROP summer exchange and colleague who is at Stanford on a Fulbright fellowship.

Jan. 2014, Julia Nesheiwat's (working-adult PhD candidate) entry on the US State Dept. diplomat blog discusses her research on post-disaster green reconstruction and US-Japan energy initiatives. Working-adult-doctoral student advisee, A. Iimura, wins best poster award at Mechanical Sci. and Engr. dept. mid-term.

Nov./Dec. 2013, traveled to Kunming, China for a student workshop with Tsinghua Univ. and Kunming Univ. of Science and Technology. My advisee (H. Seki) won an award for best poster presentation. In Dec. attended the ACEEES international forum in Huntington Beach, California. Enjoyed the interactions with various students and faculty. Upon returning to Tokyo, I attended the Tokyo Tech Academic Global Leader faculty development workshop near Mt. Fuji. Overall, 2013 was a busy year for me having traveled overseas 9 times. Really looking for to 2014.

Oct. 2013, traveled to Bangkok to attend AOTULE annual meeting and new Erasmus Mundus program EASED kick-off meeting at ECP (Paris). Both meetings went extremely well.

Aug. 2013, moderated panel discussion on careers for science and engineering graduate and research exchange students at the 5th Multidisciplinary International Student Workshop (MISW) with Ms. Sakie T. Fukushima and Prof. Nobuo Matsuki as panelists.

July 2013, served as the moderator for the US Ambassador to Japan John Roos' talk on the Tomodachi Initiative to 160 Tokyo Tech students on the Ookayama campus. This was the Ambassador's last talk in Japan to university students before he returns to the USA.

June 2013, Julia's paper in Energy Policy entitled, Japan's Post-Fukushima Reconstruction: A Case Study for Implementation of Sustainable Energy Technologies, is online. Presented a paper at the American Society for Engineering Education, International Division, in Atlanta, Georgia on the Tokyo Tech International Research Opportunity Program (TiROP).

May 2, 2013, I was honored by a visit by the Japanese Prime Minister's appointed committee to observe my class on Scientific Writing that has 35 graduate students enrolled.

April 14, 2013, enjoyed hearing US Secretary of State John Kerry's speech on US-Asian policy on campus. I was glad to see he mentioned the importance of student mobility.

March/April 2013, traveled to Paris to attend a meeting on learning outcomes at OECD. In addition travel to Univ. Minnesota - Twin Cities in Minneapolis and Carnegie Mellon Univ. in Pittsburg to promote research exchanges. In May, on the Tokyo Tech homepage a photo of the visit was the top page.

Feb./March 2013, received teaching award from Tokyo Tech. Accompanied 10 Tokyo Tech students to the Univ. of Washington-Seattle on a faculty-led study abroad trip as part of TiROP.

Jan. 2013, spoke at the Tokyo Tech TIER symposium, "Cultivating Global Leaders through World-Class University Collaborations". The symposium brought together academics from around the world to discuss student mobility programs and leadership.

Dec. 2012, attended the 1st International Education Forum on Environment and Energy Science in Hawaii organized by Tokyo Tech ACEEES. Pleased to see many outstanding doctoral student presentations and group presentations.

Nov. 2012, attended the 5th anniversary AOTULE meeting hosted by Univ. Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In addition, to the annual student conference and Deans meeting an admin staff meeting was held to discuss best practice sharing on student exchanges. At the Deans meeting, a wide range of topics were discussed including e-Learning and vision for the organization.

Oct. 30, 2012, planned and moderated panel discussion with Dean Kishimoto at Tokyo Tech Front Building with US Ambassador to Japan John Roos and Chairman of Keizai Doyukai (Japan Association of Corporate Executives) and President & Chief Executive Officer of Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Yasuchika Hasegawa. The panel was held in Japanese with simultaneous translation between Japanese/English. Tokyo Tech President opened the panel discussion with a speech about Tokyo Tech's Re-inventing Japan Project then the panelist gave a 10 min talk. Over 300 students, admin staff and faculty attended. Exit surveys by completed by over 200 attendees showed a high level of interest in the panel discussion theme, “Let’s talk about your future in the age of Science and Technology".

Oct. 3, 2012, attended a lecture at International House of Japan by Singapore Ambassador at large, Tommy Koh, entitled "Japan's Challenges and Prospects:A View from Southeast Asia, which covered topics related to business and education. The challenges that Japan faces will take time to resolve but most involve articulating a vision, leadership and implementation.

Sept. 2012, recently read this article in Science magazine about how talented academics are being drawn to Hong Kong and Singapore academic research centers because of high level of research funding and low teaching duties. This presents us with opportunities to collaborate with Asian universities.

Sept. 2012, attended the Japan Renewable Energy Foundation international symposium. Speakers from the EU noted how their governments and electrical power industry made transitions in electrical power generation to renewable energy. This a hotly debated topic in Japan. I was impressed to hear that in Sweden you can buy electricity from multiple vendors similar to selecting your mobile phone service provider.

Aug. 2012, spoke on a cross-cultural leadership in science and technology panel held at Tokyo Tech in a multidisciplinary international graduate student workshop (MISW).

June 2012, attended the TiROP program orientation and lunch. It was great to meet the summer exchange students from the US, EU and Asia. I think they will have a good exchange at Tokyo Tech.

Late May 2012, attended the EM-BEAM meeting at Hanyang University and visited KAIST. Learned about KAIST's Education 3.0 which is an e-learning program. In addition, attended the ELT Career and Professional Development Conference（ECAP）2012, in Tokyo and learned about recent activity on English Second Language instruction and Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). Finally, hosted a visit and lecture by Penn State's Prof. Martin Trethewey.

May 2012, finished revising the AOTULE homepage, 5th anniversary edition. Looking forward to welcoming Tokyo Tech's first BEAM program awarded faculty member from UPM.

April 9, 2012, attended and presented Tokyo Tech's TIER/TiROP program at the US-Japan Higher Education Panel held at Waseda Univ. It was a very good opportunity to learn about the seven other Re-inventing Japan Project awarded programs to the seven Japanese Universities (Seven Samurai).

April 2012, Recently, I attended an oral presentation given by a JST representative. One slide discussed characteristics of successful overseas exchange students, which I thought was worth sharing since I agree with it. 1. Student has a sense of their mission, 2. Accomplishment driven and willingness to take on a challenge, 3. Ability to take action in the face of ambiguity, 4. Cultural adaptability.

Feb. & March 2012, went by so quickly due to business trips within Japan to Kyushu U and Tohoku U. Had great meetings at both places. In addition, I visited Penn State, Brown U., DOE and NSF HQ. I learned a lot at Penn State and NSF.

Jan. 2012, the start of the new year and acceleration in our preparation for this year's international activities. I visited colleagues at Nanyang Technological Univ. in Singapore(NTU-S) and was very impressed by their overall education and translational research activity. Particularly, their award winning elearning program was beyond my expectation. They have been working on elearning for over 10 years.

December, was rather eventful since Tokyo Tech received five multi-year grants from JSPS, of which two were awards on the "Re-inventing Japan Project". In addition, I traveled to the Univ. Washington-Seattle, UC Berkeley and Stanford to explain the new student Tokyo Tech Research Opportunity Program (TiROP) for 2012 summer and invitational faculty visit program. TiROP is a research experience for undergraduate students (REU) and graduate students.

11/25 Recently, I discovered the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) has prepared a homepage called JUMP (Japanese Universities for Motivate People) summarizing Japanese universities degree programs that are offering education in English and funded by the MEXT G30 program. Although Tokyo Tech has graduate education in English, it is not included on this page since it did not participate in the G30 program.

11/21 Visited Nagoya university to learn about their engineering summer program and university international exchange activities.

11/9,11 Visited Keio Univ and Waseda Univ. to discuss international engineering related research exchange programs. I feel we have much work to do ahead of us to set-up a systematic research exchange program for inbound and outbound students.

10/11-12 As noted below, I attended the AOTULE Dean's Meeting held in the dept. of Aerospace Engineering at Tsinghua Univ. in Beijing, China. At the meeting, I was elected the AOTULE Steering Committee Chairman for two years, which is an honor. In addition, I visited four different labs as well as Tokyo Tech's Beijing office. Overall, I had a great time. I was very impressed by the size of the campus as well as the talented students.

9/12 When preparing slides for a presentation at the AOTULE Dean's meeting on Oct. 11th, 2011 in Beijing at Tsinghua Univ. in China, I came across a webpage on programs in Europe to spur student innovation in higher education and the motivation for its establishment. It seems European students and Japanese student have similarities when it comes to looking for post-graduation employment rather than creating it.

9/8 EM-BEAM project meeting will be held at Tokyo Tech on Oct. 26th including a panel discussion to explain the BEAM scholarship program to doctoral students and post-docs (Japanese - Koreans). I am very pleased to welcome colleagues from the EU, Korea, and Japanese at the meeting.

9/1 Two articles that I wrote for the Tokyo Tech Chronicle in Japanese were published in the June and July 2011 issues. The articles covered the Dyson engineering lecture in May and a summary of my technical communications class including students standardized GTEC test scores before and after taking my class. Chinese students test scores were higher than Japanese students. It was the first articles I have written in Japanese. It was quite a feeling of accomplishment to see them in print.

8/6 Read a recent commentary in The Daily Yomiuri, entitled "Attracting best foreign students vital to future (of Japan)" by Kazuhiro Eto, Prof. Emeritus of Tokyo Medical and Dental Univ. I could not agree with Dr. Eto's opinion more and I feel this is my mission in engineering at Tokyo Tech.

7/29 Lead a group of students on factory tours of two award winning small factories in Ota-ku. Enjoyed seeing the factory floor, production areas, and learned a great deal about their manufacturing from their company presidents. The tour was coordinated by the Ota-ku small business promotion office. Afterwards, we walked to a nearby public bathhouse for a bath and sauna.

7/2 Came upon an interesting article about doing research in Japan, "All Research is Fieldwork: A Practical Introduction to Studying in Japan as a Foreign Researcher", by Levi McLaughlin. Highly recommended for visitors to Japan.

7/1 Uploaded new EM-BEAM call info to home. This call is for EU, Korean and Japanese doctoral students and Post-docs to support overseas research at a BEAM consortium member university from 6 to 12 months.

6/28 Lead a Yokohama factory tour with 13 international students to Nissan and Kirin near the JR Shinkoyasu station. The 20 min. beverage tasting at Kirin was quite popular with the students. In addition, I was quite impressed that both factories have achieved 100% recycling of waste materials.

6/24 I attended the STAC5 ceramics conference in Yokohama last night. Yasuhiro, a Master student I have been advising, won a silver prize for his poster entitled, Lithium Niobate Surfaces and Protein Interaction for Biomedical Application, Congratulations!

6/23 I attended the Japan-EU bilateral symposium in Tokyo(Nihonbashi) which introduced various joint research activities between Japanese research groups and EU counterparts. It was quite enlightening to hear about the projects from the PIs. It appears getting institutional support on the Japanese side is quite a challenge. For more info see here.

6/18 Today, I attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison Alumni Association annual meeting in Japan. I meet many former Badgers. I was impressed that they sang "On Wisconsin". In addition, this week I had my first paper on biosensor research accepted for publication in the journal, Analytica Chimica Acta, based upon research on Troponin T, a protein emitted by the heart after a heart attack.

5/30 I read an article online that linked male happiness with cultural activities and level of participation. I found it interesting because I think the topic can be generalized to student overseas exchange and related activities.

5/23 I welcomed a summer exchange research student from Wash. U in St. Louis today. Next week, a student from Brown U. will arrive and in June a graduate student will arrive from Taiwan. Looking forward to working with the students in spite of the expected electrical shortage this summer. I am really pleased that they decided to come to Tokyo.

5/17 I co-hosted an engineering faculty welcome coffee on campus. details of it are here.

5/10 I took photos for the Dyson engineering lecture and workshop. Will use the photos taken during the lecture to write an article to be submitted to the Tokyo Tech Chronicle June issue, due May 31.

5/4 EM-BEAM scholarship candidates were notified this week by the organizer at EC Paris. We wish to congratulate those that received scholarships and look forward to their arrival at Tokyo Tech later this year and in 2012.

4/15 Recently learned of MIT's nuclear engineering students blog site to provide information on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor accident for the general public. Was quite impressed to see such service to society and it is proving popular with over one million hits in less than a month, many of which are originating in Japan.

4/7 What makes for an ideal expat? enjoyed reading a recent article in The Chronicles of Higher Education on the personality traits that make for an idea candidate, such as: extroversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability. Personally, I think being an extrovert would be helpful in Japan, but not entirely necessary since I am not.

4/4 Classes start this week for the spring term and end in early August. Unlike other universities in the Tokyo area, Tokyo Tech's spring semester and summer student exchange programs are starting on schedule.

3/25 I received an e-mail inquiry today about the safety of traveling to Japan from the USA. The WHO says it is safe but the USA government has a travel advisory. I responded it is safe to travel to Japan and within Japan as long as the earthquake and tsunami zone are avoided.