Let's Talk about .. Internship at IRIDeS

From this week, I will do my internship at the International Research Institute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS), Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan. My internship is under the supervision of Prof.Dr. Fumihiko Imamura and Assoc.Prof.Dr. Anawat Suppasri.

IRIDeS is a research institute which was established by Tohoku University from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami event. It is located in the Campus of School of Engineering.

Let's Talk about .. GLIDE

As same as other types of data, primary key is necessary to identify the unique item or instance. For the area of disaster, each disaster is also assigned unique identifier, so-called "GLIDE". GLIDE = GLobal unique disaster IDEntifier.

The format of GLIDE is AA-BBBB-CCCCCC-DDD-[EEE]; while AA is "Hazard Code", BBBB is "Year", CCCCCC is "Serial Number", DDD is "ISO Country Code", and [EEE] is "Optional State/Province Code"[1].

For example, 2011 Thailand Floods has GLIDE as "FL-2011-000135-THA".

GLIDE has been used proposed by Asian Disaster Reduction Center (ADRC). For more information you can find from http://glidenumber.net

Ref.
[1] Asian Disaster Reduction Center. (2005). GLIDE (GLobal unique disaster IDEntifier). In T. Jeggle (Ed.) Know Risk. (p. 80) Leicester: Tudor Rose.

Let's Talk about .. 2011 Tsunami affected area in Sendai in 2013

On May 11th, 2013, I got an opportunity to join the tsunami damage and reconstruction site visit in Miyagi prefecture (宮城県) with the International Research Institute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS) (災害科学国際研究所), Tohoku University (東北大学), Japan. I would like to thank Assoc.Prof. Anawat Suppasri and Tohoku University for this great opportunity.

This (AEARU) site visit trip was leaded by Assoc.Prof. Anawat Suppasri and Prof. Yuichi Ono from IRIDeS with facilities support from Tohoku University's staffs.

After 2011 East Japan Great Earthquake and Tsunami, many areas in Sendai were still inundated, especially rice fields. Sendai is considered as an important rice producer in Japan. Currently, the situation has been better.  

The first place we went to was Onagawa Hospital. This hospital was used as the shelter during the disaster. However, the water arrived the first floor of the hospital even if it is located on the cliff. You can see the mark indicated the high of water level at the entrance of Onagawa Regional Medical Center (女川町地域医療センター) in my photo below the photo of Onagawa Hospital.

 Assoc.Prof. Anawat Suppasri explained the impact of tsunami. Most of the buildings in this area were attached and submerged by water. One of the ruined building still stands there. It was a bank located in this area.

This train passed when we were moving to the next place.

Although there are breakwater along the coastal area, but the scale of 2011 tsunami was very large, that is why many areas were damaged.

 Kadonowaki Elementary School in Ishinomaki was our next stop. This school was burnt during 2011 tsunami. Actually, tsunami arrived only around the first flood of the school but there was burnt car flown to school with fire and caused the whole school burnt. Luckily, the students were informed to evacuate.

A short break was there with this Kamen raider.

Then, we moved to Arahama village in Wakabayashi. The Arahama Elementary School was used as an official evacuation shelter.

A new tsunami memorial was established, together with the list of deaths.

Next, we went to Hiyoriyama Minato Shrine (日和山 湊神社分霊). This shrine is located on the hill. Before walking up, we walked to the back of the hill to see the stone inscriptions indicated the previous tsunamis.

Then, the last destination was Iwanuma city. The idea of establishing an artificial hill, so-called "Millennium Hope Hills", was proposed in order to reduce the energy of tsunami in the future. For the current progress, they have built an experimental hill. They are checking if there is any reaction from the combination of various material of garbages.

Acknowledgements
Special thank Assoc.Prof. Anawat Suppasri, Prof. Yuichi Ono, all Tohoku University staffs.

Ref.
[1] Suppasri, A., & Mas, E. (2013, May 13). Field guide of tsunami damage and reconstruction site visit in Miyagi prefecture. Miyagi: International Research Institute of Disaster Science.

Let's Talk about .. The 10th Tokodai Science Cafe

This year, there is the 10th Tokodai Science Cafe at Tokyo Institute of Technology. Tokodai is an abbreviation of Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japanese. This time I am one of the organizer team. I'd like to introduce you to join if you're interested in.

Designed by Natsumi Takahashi

The 10th Tokodai Science Cafe

Theme: さわる　感じる　伝える　こころ

Date: Saturday February 16th, 2013

Time: 13:00-15:30 (Door open: 12:45)

Venue: 手島精一記念会議室, Tokyo Tech Front 3rd Floor, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Ookayama Campus

Entrance fee: 500 Yen (Including drink and snacks)

Language: Japanese (mainly)

Note: Web register is required

URL: http://titechsciencecafe2013.web.fc2.com/index.html

Let's Talk about .. TJIA 2012

This year I am co-chairperson of the 5th Thailand-Japan International Academic Conference 2012 (TJIA 2012). TJIA 2012 is going to be on October 20th, 2012 at W9 Building, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Ookayama Campus, Tokyo, Japan.

It is going to be one of the interesting place to communicate and exchange the ideas among researchers, students, and academicians from Thailand, Japan, and others.

What is TJIA?
The Thailand-Japan International Academic Conference (TJIA) is the annual conference that provides a platform for students, academicians and researchers to present their research results and development activities. This conference not only provides opportunities for the delegates to exchange new ideas and application experiences face to face, but also promotes research collaboration between Thailand and Japan. The TJIA is organized by Thai Students’ Association in Japan under the Royal Patronage (TSAJ) with the goal to promote the collaboration among Thai, Japanese as well as people from other countries regardless of their specialization and nationality. The TJIA conference has evolved from the Thai-Japanese Students’ Academic Exchange Meeting (TJSE) conference held in 2006 and 2007 at Osaka University. Following the success of TJSE, the conference continued being held every year and its scale was extended to be equivalent to international symposium under the name “Thailand-Japan International Academic Conference (TJIA)” starts from 2008, when it was held at Tokyo Institute of Technology.
Source: http://tsaj.org/tjia2012/about-tjia/

Let's Talk about .. iRobot

I got the information about iRobot from STeLA, so I went to listen to Colin Angle, Co-founder, chairman & CEO of iRobot in iRobot CEO Lecture at the New Otani Hotel, Tokyo on September 28, 2011.

He talked about his adventure in entrepreneurship after his graduation from MIT.

Nowadays, iRobot has 400 million in 2010 revenue, more than 700 employees located in Hong Kong, China, France, UK, India, and 3 offices in USA. They have shipped more than 1.5 billion dollars worth of robots.

He separated the timeline of his company into 3 phases: Technology development, Robot development, and Robot production. 

He has inspiration to make cool technology. During the technology development, iRobot built cool robots. In the robot development, iRobot built many types of robot including Dinosaurs robot.

He also had many failed business models over time. But he and his company is still keep continuing until they built Roomba-an intelligent FloorVac.

First, because they did not know about how to clean. What they know was only cleaning home was a great application. So, they made a asymmetric strategic partnership to learn how to clean and manufacture using OPM. The concept is that the large company has money, channel, and market knowledge, while small company, like iRobot at that time, has cool technology, and innovation. In fact, the name they gave to Roomba at the first time was "CyberSuck", and then, "DustPuppy", but they are not good to be a commercial product, thus they outsourced the company to create the name, which is "Roomba". One luck they got is the advertisement. Because of the cool innovation, the iRobot were published in many famous media such as Popular Science, National Geographic, etc.

Colin showed the Revised Technology Adoption Life Cycle. The innovators and early adaptor periods are not too hard since the innovation lovers will buy your new cool technological products, but to become the mass product, many factors are needed.

Engineering VS Marketing

Colin described about the vision of engineers and marketers. They are different.

There are 3 rules to make the product:

1. Don't get struck on Oriental carpet fringe.

2. Simple is good.

3. Reliable and Dependable is everything.

iRobot Ava

The new idea, iRobot is doing is the Robot Enabled Home. To be the center of the elements of a home that takes care of everyone, they built the prototype of iRobot Ava. Ava is a Human Interface Robot (HIR). The controller interface is Apple iPad.

Let's Talk about .. Drug Development and Innovations

On August 1st, 2012, I joined the open seminar organized by Global Health Leadership Program (GHLP), the University of Tokyo. 

The speaker is Dr. Ryo Kubota, M.D., Ph.D., Chairman, President & CEO of Acucela, Inc. The title of seminar is Drug development and innovations driven by bio ventures in the United States.

He described about how to introduce new molecule to the market and innovate as new drug.

FDA or U.S. Food and Drug Administration is the institute that has knowledge of all drugs from overall companies even confidential information, so it is good that all the drug companies let FDA checks the new products or experimental results before coming our to the market.

Process from discover to commercialization

When is the best time to start the drug company? Development phase should be the best time since we have done some amount of experiment until the risk already reduced. However, for him, he started since the beginning period.

There is difference between in Japan and US since Japanese people require quite high level of safety.

The cost of new drugs

The cost of new drugs increase every year. Currently, 2.7 Billion US Dollar is the fundamental cost to create one new drug development. It is capital intensive industry.

Current US health care costs exceed 17% GDP, while Japan is 8.5% GDP (That’s why we cannot see many new drugs come in Japanese market). However, the life expectation is better, so it means other factors that result this outcome in Japan is better than US.

Deep pile

The idea of deep pile shows that in case the drug company failed from one molecule, the company still can operate with other parallel molecule research.

Acucela

"The more diversity you are, the more idea you have", Dr. Kobuta explained that he tries to have multi nationality employees in his company because he believes that when we have any problems, people from difference places have different idea to solve the problem.

Drug development and innovations driven by bio ventures in the United States