NTU-UTokyo Conference on Developing a Sustainable Society in East Asia

NTU and the University of Tokyo (UTokyo) held an academic conference themed, “Developing a Sustainable Future Society in East Asia,” on NTU campus during December 12-13, 2018. This event marked the third joint conference between the two schools, the former two being held at UTokyo and NTU in 2015 and 2016, respectively.

UTokyo President Makoto Gonokami (五神真) led a delegation of 79 faculty members and students to visit NTU for the conference. Together with the active participation of 10 colleges at NTU, the turnout reached over 300. Memorably, this was the first time President Gonokami visited NTU after his inauguration in 2015. During this visit, he met with NTU Interim President Tei-Wei Kuo (郭大維) before the event on December 10 to discuss potential research collaborations between UTokyo and NTU.

The 2018 NTU-UTokyo Joint Conference was opened by NTU Executive Vice President for University Affairs Ta-Te Lin (林達德) and UTokyo President Gonokami, during which Interim President Kuo, though unable to attend, offered his welcome greetings via a video. In his welcome remarks, Executive Vice President Lin gladly revealed that the joint conference has created a research community of over 300 faculty members from the two schools since its beginning in 2015. Moreover, NTU launched an initiation funding program in 2016 to support NTU faculty members who are interested in conducting collaborative research projects with NTU’s strategic partners. Among the 162 approved projects so far, 56 were collaborations with UTokyo.

During the conference, the faculty members of the two universities actively participated in the three keynote speeches and a series of parallel sessions to exchange their views on how to further their collaborations to develop a sustainable society in East Asia.

The three keynote speeches were delivered by NTU’s former President Pan-Chyr Yang (楊泮池), UTokyo Prof. Hiroyuki Nakayama (中山裕之), and NTU Prof. Chun-Chieh Wu (吳俊傑). Dr. Yang talked about fine particles (PM2.5) as a global threat, gene-cancer relationships, and prevention and treatment suggestions. Dr. Nakayama shared the experience of how UTokyo’s Future Society Initiative and One Earth Guardians have put the One Health concept into practice to foster a sustainable future. Dr. Wu introduced the multi-year project DOTSTAR and how his team’s targeted observations and research results have helped improve weather forecasting accuracy to reduce typhoon-related disasters.

Besides the keynote speeches, a total of 12 parallel sessions were held on a wide range of topics, including social sciences, electronic engineering, computer science, oceanography, medicine, public health, materials science, agriculture, forestry, veterinary medicine, psychology, and biotechnology.

For detailed info about the program, parallel sessions, and photos taken at the conference, visit https://intlprograms0.wixsite.com/ntuutconference2018.